Operation Wetback...
Operation Wetback was a 1954 project of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to remove about 1.2 million illegal immigrants from the southwestern United States, with a focus on Mexican nationals. In addition to the deportations, the term wetbacks became a slur referring to Mexicans in general.
History
Burgeoning numbers of illegal aliens prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to appoint his longtime friend, General Joseph Swing, as INS Commissioner. According to Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration immediately upon taking office. In a letter to Sen. William Fulbright, Eisenhower quoted a report in The New York Times that said: "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government."[1]
Eisenhower became increasingly concerned that profits from illegal labor led to corruption. The operation was modeled after the deportation program that invited American citizens of Mexican ancestry to go back to Mexico during the Great Depression because of the bad economy north of the border. See Mexican Repatriation.
Operation
The operation began in California and Arizona and coordinated 1,075 Border Patrol agents along with state and local police agencies to mount an aggressive crackdown, going as far as police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods and random stops and ID checks of "Mexican-looking" people in a region with many Native Americans and native Hispanics.[2] 750 agents targeted agricultural areas with a goal of 1000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Around 488,000 people fled the country for fear of being apprehended. By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and the INS estimates that 500,000-700,000 people had left Texas voluntarily. To discourage re-entry, buses and trains took many people deep within Mexico before being set free. Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried them from Port Isabel, Texas, to Veracruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) south.
Result
Operation Wetback deported approximately 80,000 Mexican nationals in the space of almost a year, although local INS officials claimed that an additional 500,000-700,000 had fled to Mexico before the campaign began. The INS estimates rested on the claim that most undocumented people, fearing apprehension by the government, had voluntarily repatriated themselves before and during.
Notes
^ How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico. The Christian Science Monitor (6 July 2006). Retrieved on 2007-09-09.
^ See U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975) (disallowing the practice)
References
García, Juan Ramon. Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1980. ISBN: 0313213534
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/25/Operation_Wetbck
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Operation Wetback...
Operation Wetback was a 1954 project of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to remove about 1.2 million illegal immigrants from the southwestern United States, with a focus on Mexican nationals. In addition to the deportations, the term wetbacks became a slur referring to Mexicans in general.
History
Burgeoning numbers of illegal aliens prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to appoint his longtime friend, General Joseph Swing, as INS Commissioner. According to Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration immediately upon taking office. In a letter to Sen. William Fulbright, Eisenhower quoted a report in The New York Times that said: "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government."[1]
Eisenhower became increasingly concerned that profits from illegal labor led to corruption. The operation was modeled after the deportation program that invited American citizens of Mexican ancestry to go back to Mexico during the Great Depression because of the bad economy north of the border. See Mexican Repatriation.
Operation
The operation began in California and Arizona and coordinated 1,075 Border Patrol agents along with state and local police agencies to mount an aggressive crackdown, going as far as police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods and random stops and ID checks of "Mexican-looking" people in a region with many Native Americans and native Hispanics.[2] 750 agents targeted agricultural areas with a goal of 1000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Around 488,000 people fled the country for fear of being apprehended. By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and the INS estimates that 500,000-700,000 people had left Texas voluntarily. To discourage re-entry, buses and trains took many people deep within Mexico before being set free. Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried them from Port Isabel, Texas, to Veracruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) south.
Result
Operation Wetback deported approximately 80,000 Mexican nationals in the space of almost a year, although local INS officials claimed that an additional 500,000-700,000 had fled to Mexico before the campaign began. The INS estimates rested on the claim that most undocumented people, fearing apprehension by the government, had voluntarily repatriated themselves before and during.
Notes
^ How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico. The Christian Science Monitor (6 July 2006). Retrieved on 2007-09-09.
^ See U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975) (disallowing the practice)
References
García, Juan Ramon. Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1980. ISBN: 0313213534
History
Burgeoning numbers of illegal aliens prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to appoint his longtime friend, General Joseph Swing, as INS Commissioner. According to Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration immediately upon taking office. In a letter to Sen. William Fulbright, Eisenhower quoted a report in The New York Times that said: "The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican 'wetbacks' to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government."[1]
Eisenhower became increasingly concerned that profits from illegal labor led to corruption. The operation was modeled after the deportation program that invited American citizens of Mexican ancestry to go back to Mexico during the Great Depression because of the bad economy north of the border. See Mexican Repatriation.
Operation
The operation began in California and Arizona and coordinated 1,075 Border Patrol agents along with state and local police agencies to mount an aggressive crackdown, going as far as police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods and random stops and ID checks of "Mexican-looking" people in a region with many Native Americans and native Hispanics.[2] 750 agents targeted agricultural areas with a goal of 1000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Around 488,000 people fled the country for fear of being apprehended. By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and the INS estimates that 500,000-700,000 people had left Texas voluntarily. To discourage re-entry, buses and trains took many people deep within Mexico before being set free. Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried them from Port Isabel, Texas, to Veracruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) south.
Result
Operation Wetback deported approximately 80,000 Mexican nationals in the space of almost a year, although local INS officials claimed that an additional 500,000-700,000 had fled to Mexico before the campaign began. The INS estimates rested on the claim that most undocumented people, fearing apprehension by the government, had voluntarily repatriated themselves before and during.
Notes
^ How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico. The Christian Science Monitor (6 July 2006). Retrieved on 2007-09-09.
^ See U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975) (disallowing the practice)
References
García, Juan Ramon. Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1980. ISBN: 0313213534
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Legislature Debates Illegal Immigration...
Legislature Debates Illegal Immigration...
Virginia Tightens Bills on Residency Legislature Debates Illegal Immigration
Senate Minority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City), left, talks with Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) in Richmond. Saslaw says immigration bills that are punitive will face hurdles in the Senate. (By Steve Helber -- Associated Press) By Anita KumarWashington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page C01
RICHMOND -- Many candidates for the Virginia General Assembly campaigned last year on a pledge to curb the state's illegal immigrant population. But two weeks into the legislative session, many of the more than 100 immigration-related bills that have been introduced go even further and could penalize those living in the country legally.
One bill would require that driver's license exams be conducted in English. Another would force people applying for a driver's license to show proof of U.S. citizenship. And several bills would declare English as Virginia's official language.
"Virginia's legislators claim that they only want to crack down on undocumented immigrants and that they welcome those immigrants who 'play by the rules.' That's what they say," said Tim Freilich, legal director for the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers. "Then they turn around and introduce these bills that directly attack Virginia's lawfully present immigrants."
But Del. Jackson H. Miller (R-Manassas), who has introduced several of the bills, including one that calls for defendants to pay for language interpreters in court if convicted, said that legal immigrants are not being targeted.
"They're welcome. That is not what the issue is about," he said. "The issue is about the rule of law and fairness."
The number of immigration bills in the 60-day legislative session is the highest in recent years and, some lawmakers say, is more than the total addressing any other topic, including the abusive-driving fees and mental health reform.
House members have introduced more than 100 immigration bills; senators had filed about 25 as of Friday, the deadline for legislators to file bills for the season.
Republicans across the state, and some Democrats in conservative districts, seized on illegal immigration last year before the November election, announcing proposals to curb illegal immigration. Much of the debate was in Northern Virginia, including Prince William County, where officials are planning to curtail government services to illegal immigrants and increase enforcement.
"It's ground zero," said freshman Del. Paul F. Nichols (D-Prince William), who has introduced several immigration bills. "It was a hotbed issue. I got elected on a promise that I would dissuade illegal immigrants from coming into Prince William County. Illegal is illegal. If you're going to have laws, which we do, and you're not going to have enforcement of them, then you've got a failure."
But some House members say they know their efforts will be thwarted by the newly Democrat-controlled Senate and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who has said that immigration policy should be left largely to the federal government.
Senate Democrats list immigration as one of their six priorities for the legislative session, but Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) said bills that are punitive will face a tough road in the Senate.
Last year, lawmakers proposed more than 50 bills dealing with immigration. Only seven were sent to Kaine for his signature. Many of the bills died in the Senate after being passed by the House, which was controlled by moderate Republicans who often collaborated with Democrats.
Because of the volume of immigration bills filed this year, each chamber is sending them to one committee to be examined for duplication. In the House, Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) created a subcommittee consisting of four Republicans and a Democrat. In the Senate, most of the bills are being sent to the Courts of Justice Committee.
Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, who represents several immigrant groups, including the Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations, said the number of bills filed this year is surprising because many candidates who campaigned the loudest for sanctions against illegal immigrants did not win in November.
"If you look at the results of the election, it's hard to see the genesis of this attention," Gastanaga said. "For the majority of the electorate, this was not the most important issue, and yet it is going to take up more time in the session."
Only a handful of proposals offer immigrants help, including creating an office of immigration assistance, protecting immigrant crime victims and increasing the schools' funding formula based on the immigrant population.
House leaders say they will consider all bills but remain focused on the five priorities they outlined before the election: prohibiting illegal immigrants from attending public colleges, requiring sheriffs to check immigration status, suspending business licenses of companies that hire illegal immigrants, denying bail to illegal immigrants and ensuring that one person at every jail has federal authority to begin deportation proceedings.
But Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William) said he hopes that House leaders will also consider other proposals.
"There are a lot of concerns we have to address," he said. "Nobody has a monopoly on these bills. There are multiple approaches. We're trying to use our imaginations."
Other bills that have been introduced call for home buyers to prove they are in the country legally to qualify for a mortgage, for police officers to have the authority to begin deportation proceedings, for students to show a valid birth certificate before entering public K-12 schools or college and to create a state agency to deal with illegal immigration. At least two bills would allow employers to fire workers for misconduct if they speak a language other than English at work.
Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of Supervisors, said he asked legislators to introduce proposals that would build more detention space and clarify a locality's authority to enforce immigration policies, among other issues.
"What we are concerned about most is public safety, not about lifestyle and cultural differences," said Stewart (R-At Large). "We need to focus the ball on removing illegal immigrants."
Of the 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the United States, 250,000 to 300,000 live in Virginia, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington. An additional 440,000 people in Virginia are not U.S. citizens but are in the state legally, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Sen. George L. Barker (D-Fairfax) said that some bills, including his, target not immigrants directly but the problems that can stem from an escalating immigrant population. He and other lawmakers have introduced bills to help localities combat single-family homes being used as boardinghouses.
"I'm not going to do anything that is going to have a negative effect on those people who are legal," he said.
In the past three years, as the federal government repeatedly failed to pass legislation regarding the nation's illegal immigrants, many states considered immigration bills that address employment, identification, law enforcement and public benefits.
Last year, more than 1,500 immigration bills were introduced in legislatures -- three times as many as in 2006. Only 244 were enacted.
Ann Morse, program director for the Immigrant Policy Project at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Washington, said states are limited in what they can do to curb illegal immigration.
Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax), who leads the House Courts of Justice Committee and reviews immigration bills, said some bills will be impossible to implement because of legal or financial restrictions and lack of consensus among lawmakers. He said he has narrowed the list of proposals that he expects will pass this session.
But Angela M. Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center at the American Immigration Law Foundation in Washington, said: "It's just fantasy to think [any of these new laws] are going to drive people out. They will just go underground."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/articl
e/2008/01/19/AR2008011902282.html?sid=ST2008012000838a>
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/20/Legislature_Debates_Illegal_Immigration
Virginia Tightens Bills on Residency Legislature Debates Illegal Immigration
Senate Minority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City), left, talks with Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) in Richmond. Saslaw says immigration bills that are punitive will face hurdles in the Senate. (By Steve Helber -- Associated Press) By Anita KumarWashington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page C01
RICHMOND -- Many candidates for the Virginia General Assembly campaigned last year on a pledge to curb the state's illegal immigrant population. But two weeks into the legislative session, many of the more than 100 immigration-related bills that have been introduced go even further and could penalize those living in the country legally.
One bill would require that driver's license exams be conducted in English. Another would force people applying for a driver's license to show proof of U.S. citizenship. And several bills would declare English as Virginia's official language.
"Virginia's legislators claim that they only want to crack down on undocumented immigrants and that they welcome those immigrants who 'play by the rules.' That's what they say," said Tim Freilich, legal director for the Virginia Justice Center for Farm and Immigrant Workers. "Then they turn around and introduce these bills that directly attack Virginia's lawfully present immigrants."
But Del. Jackson H. Miller (R-Manassas), who has introduced several of the bills, including one that calls for defendants to pay for language interpreters in court if convicted, said that legal immigrants are not being targeted.
"They're welcome. That is not what the issue is about," he said. "The issue is about the rule of law and fairness."
The number of immigration bills in the 60-day legislative session is the highest in recent years and, some lawmakers say, is more than the total addressing any other topic, including the abusive-driving fees and mental health reform.
House members have introduced more than 100 immigration bills; senators had filed about 25 as of Friday, the deadline for legislators to file bills for the season.
Republicans across the state, and some Democrats in conservative districts, seized on illegal immigration last year before the November election, announcing proposals to curb illegal immigration. Much of the debate was in Northern Virginia, including Prince William County, where officials are planning to curtail government services to illegal immigrants and increase enforcement.
"It's ground zero," said freshman Del. Paul F. Nichols (D-Prince William), who has introduced several immigration bills. "It was a hotbed issue. I got elected on a promise that I would dissuade illegal immigrants from coming into Prince William County. Illegal is illegal. If you're going to have laws, which we do, and you're not going to have enforcement of them, then you've got a failure."
But some House members say they know their efforts will be thwarted by the newly Democrat-controlled Senate and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who has said that immigration policy should be left largely to the federal government.
Senate Democrats list immigration as one of their six priorities for the legislative session, but Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) said bills that are punitive will face a tough road in the Senate.
Last year, lawmakers proposed more than 50 bills dealing with immigration. Only seven were sent to Kaine for his signature. Many of the bills died in the Senate after being passed by the House, which was controlled by moderate Republicans who often collaborated with Democrats.
Because of the volume of immigration bills filed this year, each chamber is sending them to one committee to be examined for duplication. In the House, Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) created a subcommittee consisting of four Republicans and a Democrat. In the Senate, most of the bills are being sent to the Courts of Justice Committee.
Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, who represents several immigrant groups, including the Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations, said the number of bills filed this year is surprising because many candidates who campaigned the loudest for sanctions against illegal immigrants did not win in November.
"If you look at the results of the election, it's hard to see the genesis of this attention," Gastanaga said. "For the majority of the electorate, this was not the most important issue, and yet it is going to take up more time in the session."
Only a handful of proposals offer immigrants help, including creating an office of immigration assistance, protecting immigrant crime victims and increasing the schools' funding formula based on the immigrant population.
House leaders say they will consider all bills but remain focused on the five priorities they outlined before the election: prohibiting illegal immigrants from attending public colleges, requiring sheriffs to check immigration status, suspending business licenses of companies that hire illegal immigrants, denying bail to illegal immigrants and ensuring that one person at every jail has federal authority to begin deportation proceedings.
But Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William) said he hopes that House leaders will also consider other proposals.
"There are a lot of concerns we have to address," he said. "Nobody has a monopoly on these bills. There are multiple approaches. We're trying to use our imaginations."
Other bills that have been introduced call for home buyers to prove they are in the country legally to qualify for a mortgage, for police officers to have the authority to begin deportation proceedings, for students to show a valid birth certificate before entering public K-12 schools or college and to create a state agency to deal with illegal immigration. At least two bills would allow employers to fire workers for misconduct if they speak a language other than English at work.
Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of Supervisors, said he asked legislators to introduce proposals that would build more detention space and clarify a locality's authority to enforce immigration policies, among other issues.
"What we are concerned about most is public safety, not about lifestyle and cultural differences," said Stewart (R-At Large). "We need to focus the ball on removing illegal immigrants."
Of the 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the United States, 250,000 to 300,000 live in Virginia, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington. An additional 440,000 people in Virginia are not U.S. citizens but are in the state legally, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Sen. George L. Barker (D-Fairfax) said that some bills, including his, target not immigrants directly but the problems that can stem from an escalating immigrant population. He and other lawmakers have introduced bills to help localities combat single-family homes being used as boardinghouses.
"I'm not going to do anything that is going to have a negative effect on those people who are legal," he said.
In the past three years, as the federal government repeatedly failed to pass legislation regarding the nation's illegal immigrants, many states considered immigration bills that address employment, identification, law enforcement and public benefits.
Last year, more than 1,500 immigration bills were introduced in legislatures -- three times as many as in 2006. Only 244 were enacted.
Ann Morse, program director for the Immigrant Policy Project at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Washington, said states are limited in what they can do to curb illegal immigration.
Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax), who leads the House Courts of Justice Committee and reviews immigration bills, said some bills will be impossible to implement because of legal or financial restrictions and lack of consensus among lawmakers. He said he has narrowed the list of proposals that he expects will pass this session.
But Angela M. Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center at the American Immigration Law Foundation in Washington, said: "It's just fantasy to think [any of these new laws] are going to drive people out. They will just go underground."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/articl
e/2008/01/19/AR2008011902282.html?sid=ST2008012000838a>
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/20/Legislature_Debates_Illegal_Immigration
Mount Rainier Council to Vote On Becoming ’Sanctuary’ City...
Mount Rainier Council to Vote On Becoming 'Sanctuary' City
By Jackie SpinnerWashington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page C04
The tiny city of Mount Rainier is considering whether to declare itself a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, entering a regional and national debate over enforcement of immigration law.
If the City Council approves the proposal, the eclectic city of 9,000 in Prince George's County will join nearby Takoma Park in prohibiting police officers and city workers from checking the immigration status of residents or reporting those who lack legal residency documents to federal immigration authorities. Takoma Park has been a "sanctuary" city since 1985.
Mount Rainier City Council member Pedro Briones, who proposed the measure, said his intent is not to protect criminals but to allow all immigrants access to community services "so long as they are contributing residents of Mount Rainier and follow our city rules and regulations."
Briones added: "Until we have more effective national immigration policies, there's no reason why hardworking immigrants who may be undocumented should live in fear that their local police, code enforcement officer or sanitation worker is going to turn them over for possible deportation."
The five-member, nonpartisan council is expected to vote on the measure after a Feb. 12 public hearing. One other council member has endorsed the measure, and another was said to be leaning in favor. But the city, like the Washington region, appears split on the issue.
Last year, Prince William County supervisors approved a resolution meant to deny illegal immigrants certain public services and increase immigration enforcement by local police. Loudoun County supervisors also approved a measure to restrict access to public services for illegal immigrants, although a new majority on the Loudoun board recently distanced itself from that policy.
In Arlington County, supervisors voiced sympathy for illegal immigrants displaced from other communities but declined to pass legislation that would offer them sanctuary. Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) has said the county should not be in the business of enforcing immigration issues but has gone no further. Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold (R) has issued an executive order declaring that the county will sever contracts with businesses caught employing illegal immigrants.
Mount Rainier is known as a funky, left-leaning community. The city has a cooperative swimming pool, vegetarian food store, cooperative bicycle shop and community tool shed for residents to borrow lawn mowers and chain saws. Signs calling for the repeal of Maryland's death penalty and the impeachment of President Bush dot many residential lawns like colorful flags at a political convention.
Census data show that almost 28 percent of residents are foreign-born, compared with about 11 percent nationally. Nearly 30 percent of residents speak a language other than English at home, almost double the national average.
A Mount Rainier e-mail group list has been flooded with postings on the sanctuary proposal. Council members expect a large turnout at the hearing.
Sandra Joseph, an administrative secretary who has lived in the city for 20 years, said she opposes the measure.
"While I feel for people wanting to better their lives, coming here illegally and getting the benefits just isn't right," she said. "We just don't have the resources for something like that."
Victor M. Kenworthy, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 85, which represents the city's police officers, said national immigration policies and laws should be reviewed. But he said local law enforcement should not be prohibited from cooperating with federal authorities.
"That's a big sticking point for us," he said. "You have a local entity coming up with some type of legislation that says it doesn't recognize federal law. It's not a question of whether the law is right or wrong. We have to respect the law whether we like it or not."
In fact, city policy bars the police department from enforcing federal immigration laws and from inquiring about a person's citizenship status. The proposed legislation would extend that sanctuary policy to any agent, officer, employee, contractor or subcontractor of the city.
"There are great residents in our town from various Latin American countries," said council member Jimmy Tarlau, who supports the Briones proposal. "We want to reach out to them. We want to indicate that they are welcome and we don't really care about their status."
If the measure passes, Mount Rainier will join more than 30 other cities nationwide that have sanctuary laws in place, including Seattle, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Austin, Los Angeles and Madison, Wis.
The sanctuary movement took hold in the 1980s, inspired by churches that were helping Central Americans who fled civil war at home. Berkeley, Calif., and St. Paul, Minn., were the first two cities to adopt sanctuary laws in response. Takoma Park reaffirmed its status as a sanctuary city in October after its police chief asked for and was denied more leeway to execute immigration warrants.
Federal authorities, however, have pledged to uphold immigration laws, conducting raids on businesses and arresting and deporting illegal residents whether they live in a sanctuary city or not.
"Those who willfully violate U.S. immigration laws face the consequences of their actions," said Pat A. Reilly, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "While the courts and various local governments decide how to approach lawmaking in their communities, ICE will continue to enforce the federal laws throughout the country."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/articl
e/2008/01/19/AR2008011901869.html
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/20/Mount_Rainier_Council_to_Vote_On_Becoming_Sanctuary_City
By Jackie SpinnerWashington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 20, 2008; Page C04
The tiny city of Mount Rainier is considering whether to declare itself a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, entering a regional and national debate over enforcement of immigration law.
If the City Council approves the proposal, the eclectic city of 9,000 in Prince George's County will join nearby Takoma Park in prohibiting police officers and city workers from checking the immigration status of residents or reporting those who lack legal residency documents to federal immigration authorities. Takoma Park has been a "sanctuary" city since 1985.
Mount Rainier City Council member Pedro Briones, who proposed the measure, said his intent is not to protect criminals but to allow all immigrants access to community services "so long as they are contributing residents of Mount Rainier and follow our city rules and regulations."
Briones added: "Until we have more effective national immigration policies, there's no reason why hardworking immigrants who may be undocumented should live in fear that their local police, code enforcement officer or sanitation worker is going to turn them over for possible deportation."
The five-member, nonpartisan council is expected to vote on the measure after a Feb. 12 public hearing. One other council member has endorsed the measure, and another was said to be leaning in favor. But the city, like the Washington region, appears split on the issue.
Last year, Prince William County supervisors approved a resolution meant to deny illegal immigrants certain public services and increase immigration enforcement by local police. Loudoun County supervisors also approved a measure to restrict access to public services for illegal immigrants, although a new majority on the Loudoun board recently distanced itself from that policy.
In Arlington County, supervisors voiced sympathy for illegal immigrants displaced from other communities but declined to pass legislation that would offer them sanctuary. Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) has said the county should not be in the business of enforcing immigration issues but has gone no further. Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold (R) has issued an executive order declaring that the county will sever contracts with businesses caught employing illegal immigrants.
Mount Rainier is known as a funky, left-leaning community. The city has a cooperative swimming pool, vegetarian food store, cooperative bicycle shop and community tool shed for residents to borrow lawn mowers and chain saws. Signs calling for the repeal of Maryland's death penalty and the impeachment of President Bush dot many residential lawns like colorful flags at a political convention.
Census data show that almost 28 percent of residents are foreign-born, compared with about 11 percent nationally. Nearly 30 percent of residents speak a language other than English at home, almost double the national average.
A Mount Rainier e-mail group list has been flooded with postings on the sanctuary proposal. Council members expect a large turnout at the hearing.
Sandra Joseph, an administrative secretary who has lived in the city for 20 years, said she opposes the measure.
"While I feel for people wanting to better their lives, coming here illegally and getting the benefits just isn't right," she said. "We just don't have the resources for something like that."
Victor M. Kenworthy, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 85, which represents the city's police officers, said national immigration policies and laws should be reviewed. But he said local law enforcement should not be prohibited from cooperating with federal authorities.
"That's a big sticking point for us," he said. "You have a local entity coming up with some type of legislation that says it doesn't recognize federal law. It's not a question of whether the law is right or wrong. We have to respect the law whether we like it or not."
In fact, city policy bars the police department from enforcing federal immigration laws and from inquiring about a person's citizenship status. The proposed legislation would extend that sanctuary policy to any agent, officer, employee, contractor or subcontractor of the city.
"There are great residents in our town from various Latin American countries," said council member Jimmy Tarlau, who supports the Briones proposal. "We want to reach out to them. We want to indicate that they are welcome and we don't really care about their status."
If the measure passes, Mount Rainier will join more than 30 other cities nationwide that have sanctuary laws in place, including Seattle, San Francisco, Albuquerque, Austin, Los Angeles and Madison, Wis.
The sanctuary movement took hold in the 1980s, inspired by churches that were helping Central Americans who fled civil war at home. Berkeley, Calif., and St. Paul, Minn., were the first two cities to adopt sanctuary laws in response. Takoma Park reaffirmed its status as a sanctuary city in October after its police chief asked for and was denied more leeway to execute immigration warrants.
Federal authorities, however, have pledged to uphold immigration laws, conducting raids on businesses and arresting and deporting illegal residents whether they live in a sanctuary city or not.
"Those who willfully violate U.S. immigration laws face the consequences of their actions," said Pat A. Reilly, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "While the courts and various local governments decide how to approach lawmaking in their communities, ICE will continue to enforce the federal laws throughout the country."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/articl
e/2008/01/19/AR2008011901869.html
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/20/Mount_Rainier_Council_to_Vote_On_Becoming_Sanctuary_City
Border Patrol Officer Killed In Attempt To Stop Rogue Vehicle...
Border Patrol Officer Killed In Attempt To Stop Rogue Vehicle
POSTED: 2:13 pm PST January 19, 2008 UPDATED: 2:50 pm PST January 19, 2008
YUMA, Calif. -- A Border Patrol officer was run over and killed on Saturday as he attempted to lay a spike strip to stop a speeding Hummer in the sand dunes of Imperial County.
Authorities in El Centro and Yuma, Ariz. said the agent was killed in the line of duty along the Mexican border in the Algodones sand dunes, 110 miles east of San Diego. Federal agents from San Diego rushed to the area to oversee the investigation.
The California Highway Patrol closed freeway ramps at Grey's Well Road, between Yuma and El Centro, but traffic on Interstate 8 itself was not affected.
Border Patrol agents in Yuma said the agent was deploying a spike strip to puncture the tires on two vehicles fleeing federal officers when he was run over and killed.
The Yuma Daily Sun reported that the two vehicles, the Hummer that hit the agent and an accompanying Ford F-150 pickup truck, were being chased west on I-8 from a checkpoint near Yuma. As the cars exited the freeway at Grey's Well Road, the agent was struck.
The vehicles sped south through sand dunes towards Mexico. Interstate 8 is less than one mile north of Baja California at that location, and the two vehicles were last seen speeding towards Mexico federal Highway 2 east of Mexicali.
The sand dunes are a popular off-road vehicle playground, and the border fence in the area is frequently overrun by some of them.
http://www.10news.com/news/15094971/detail.htmla>
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/20/Border_Patrol_Officer_Killed_In_Attempt_To_Stop_Rogue_Vehicle
POSTED: 2:13 pm PST January 19, 2008 UPDATED: 2:50 pm PST January 19, 2008
YUMA, Calif. -- A Border Patrol officer was run over and killed on Saturday as he attempted to lay a spike strip to stop a speeding Hummer in the sand dunes of Imperial County.
Authorities in El Centro and Yuma, Ariz. said the agent was killed in the line of duty along the Mexican border in the Algodones sand dunes, 110 miles east of San Diego. Federal agents from San Diego rushed to the area to oversee the investigation.
The California Highway Patrol closed freeway ramps at Grey's Well Road, between Yuma and El Centro, but traffic on Interstate 8 itself was not affected.
Border Patrol agents in Yuma said the agent was deploying a spike strip to puncture the tires on two vehicles fleeing federal officers when he was run over and killed.
The Yuma Daily Sun reported that the two vehicles, the Hummer that hit the agent and an accompanying Ford F-150 pickup truck, were being chased west on I-8 from a checkpoint near Yuma. As the cars exited the freeway at Grey's Well Road, the agent was struck.
The vehicles sped south through sand dunes towards Mexico. Interstate 8 is less than one mile north of Baja California at that location, and the two vehicles were last seen speeding towards Mexico federal Highway 2 east of Mexicali.
The sand dunes are a popular off-road vehicle playground, and the border fence in the area is frequently overrun by some of them.
http://www.10news.com/news/15094971/detail.htmla>
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/20/Border_Patrol_Officer_Killed_In_Attempt_To_Stop_Rogue_Vehicle
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Deadline nears for proof of citizenship at land borders...
Deadline nears for proof of citizenship at land borders...
Updated 3:32 p.m. EST, Tue January 15, 2008 Deadline nears for proof of citizenship at land borders From Mike M. Ahlers
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- For U.S. and Canadian citizens, the jig is up.
Beginning January 31, citizens of both countries must present proof of citizenship and a government-issued ID when entering the United States at land border crossings and sea ports.
Currently, U.S. citizens can enter the United States simply by making an "oral declaration" -- that is, saying they are citizens and convincing the border officials that they are. No written documentation is required at land or sea ports. Citizens don't need a passport, a driver's license, or even a receipt from their local power company or dry cleaners.
The same is true for residents of Canada and Bermuda seeking entry into the United States.
But as the government continues to tighten border security, the centuries-old practice of accepting oral declarations is coming to an end, and even tighter requirements are on the way. Beginning in June 2009, travelers will need a passport or some other form of government-approved border ID cards, which are now being developed.
The January 31 change is the easy step, many say, largely because of the mistaken perception people have that proof of citizenship is already required.
"Most people believe they already need a driver's license or some form of identification," said Sarah Hubbard of the Detroit Regional Chamber in Detroit, Michigan. "They can't fathom the fact that right now, you don't need anything."
Don't Miss
Frequent border crossers claim some border agents foster that misperception, telling them government-issued IDs are mandatory. (Passports are already required for air travel.)
In a nutshell, here are the changes as of January 31:
Oral declarations of citizenship alone will no longer be accepted.
U.S. and Canadian citizens 19 and older will need to present a government-issued photo ID, such as a driver's license, along with proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or naturalization certificate.
Children ages 18 and under will only be required to present proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate.
Passports and trusted traveler program cards -- NEXUS, SENTRI and FAST -- will continue to be accepted for cross-border travel.
All existing nonimmigrant visa and passport requirements will remain in effect and will not be altered by this change.
Interestingly, despite the stern language in government pronouncements, the January 31 change will not entirely stop border crossers without credentials.
"At the end of the day, my understanding is the U.S. Constitution is always going to allow a U.S. citizen to come into the U.S.," Hubbard said, and federal officials acknowledged.
There will always be instances when people arrive at the border without identification, officials say. But border officials say travelers will be swayed to provide documentation by the convenience that appropriate IDs bring. Travelers will also be swayed by the inconveniences they'll face when they don't have appropriate identification.
While some expect the January 31 change to be relatively uneventful, others are predicting doom.
"If DHS goes through with this, we'll have backups lasting five or six hours in places like Buffalo, Detroit and Seattle," New York Sen. Charles Schumer said, according to the Albany Business Review. Schumer said that recent congressional action to postpone the passport requirement also should have postponed the end to "oral declarations."
Exactly how many border crossers already carry proof of identity and citizenship is unknown, but is believed to be high, Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Kelly Klundt said.
"The intention is to raise awareness that document requirements are changing, to get people accustomed to carrying documents," Klundt said. And the documents they are required to carry are the same documents needed to apply for passports, enhanced driver's licenses, or other credentials that will eventually meet congressional mandates for crossing the border.
The incremental changes at the border, and repeated delays, have confused the public, said Gordon Orr of the Windsor, Essex County & Pelee Island Convention & Visitors Bureau in Ontario. "Even us in the tourism world are confused because it keeps changing," he said.
His group has created a Web site to tell potential visitors what they need to cross the border.
"It's sad to think that people out there now are not coming to Canada because they don't think they can get back without a passport," he said.
So what will happen January 31?
"The real issue is how it is implemented," said Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. "The real issue is to what extent is there discretion."
If officials take a strict approach, Beatty expects there will be traffic jams at the border rivaling last year's "Summer from Hell," during which Canadian authorities had to set up portable outhouses to accommodate people stuck in bridge traffic.
U.S. officials tell him "they will attempt to implement it in a sensitive way," he said. "I hope that is so."
Klundt said she believes the public will be quick to adapt to the changes, likening it to efforts to promote seat belt usage.
"You know what, everybody wears their seat belt now, it's no big deal," she said. "I kind of feel like this is one of those situations."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/01/15/border.identifica
tion/index.html
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/17/Deadline_nears_for_proof_of_citizenship_at_land_borders
Updated 3:32 p.m. EST, Tue January 15, 2008 Deadline nears for proof of citizenship at land borders From Mike M. Ahlers
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- For U.S. and Canadian citizens, the jig is up.
Beginning January 31, citizens of both countries must present proof of citizenship and a government-issued ID when entering the United States at land border crossings and sea ports.
Currently, U.S. citizens can enter the United States simply by making an "oral declaration" -- that is, saying they are citizens and convincing the border officials that they are. No written documentation is required at land or sea ports. Citizens don't need a passport, a driver's license, or even a receipt from their local power company or dry cleaners.
The same is true for residents of Canada and Bermuda seeking entry into the United States.
But as the government continues to tighten border security, the centuries-old practice of accepting oral declarations is coming to an end, and even tighter requirements are on the way. Beginning in June 2009, travelers will need a passport or some other form of government-approved border ID cards, which are now being developed.
The January 31 change is the easy step, many say, largely because of the mistaken perception people have that proof of citizenship is already required.
"Most people believe they already need a driver's license or some form of identification," said Sarah Hubbard of the Detroit Regional Chamber in Detroit, Michigan. "They can't fathom the fact that right now, you don't need anything."
Don't Miss
Frequent border crossers claim some border agents foster that misperception, telling them government-issued IDs are mandatory. (Passports are already required for air travel.)
In a nutshell, here are the changes as of January 31:
Oral declarations of citizenship alone will no longer be accepted.
U.S. and Canadian citizens 19 and older will need to present a government-issued photo ID, such as a driver's license, along with proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or naturalization certificate.
Children ages 18 and under will only be required to present proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate.
Passports and trusted traveler program cards -- NEXUS, SENTRI and FAST -- will continue to be accepted for cross-border travel.
All existing nonimmigrant visa and passport requirements will remain in effect and will not be altered by this change.
Interestingly, despite the stern language in government pronouncements, the January 31 change will not entirely stop border crossers without credentials.
"At the end of the day, my understanding is the U.S. Constitution is always going to allow a U.S. citizen to come into the U.S.," Hubbard said, and federal officials acknowledged.
There will always be instances when people arrive at the border without identification, officials say. But border officials say travelers will be swayed to provide documentation by the convenience that appropriate IDs bring. Travelers will also be swayed by the inconveniences they'll face when they don't have appropriate identification.
While some expect the January 31 change to be relatively uneventful, others are predicting doom.
"If DHS goes through with this, we'll have backups lasting five or six hours in places like Buffalo, Detroit and Seattle," New York Sen. Charles Schumer said, according to the Albany Business Review. Schumer said that recent congressional action to postpone the passport requirement also should have postponed the end to "oral declarations."
Exactly how many border crossers already carry proof of identity and citizenship is unknown, but is believed to be high, Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Kelly Klundt said.
"The intention is to raise awareness that document requirements are changing, to get people accustomed to carrying documents," Klundt said. And the documents they are required to carry are the same documents needed to apply for passports, enhanced driver's licenses, or other credentials that will eventually meet congressional mandates for crossing the border.
The incremental changes at the border, and repeated delays, have confused the public, said Gordon Orr of the Windsor, Essex County & Pelee Island Convention & Visitors Bureau in Ontario. "Even us in the tourism world are confused because it keeps changing," he said.
His group has created a Web site to tell potential visitors what they need to cross the border.
"It's sad to think that people out there now are not coming to Canada because they don't think they can get back without a passport," he said.
So what will happen January 31?
"The real issue is how it is implemented," said Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. "The real issue is to what extent is there discretion."
If officials take a strict approach, Beatty expects there will be traffic jams at the border rivaling last year's "Summer from Hell," during which Canadian authorities had to set up portable outhouses to accommodate people stuck in bridge traffic.
U.S. officials tell him "they will attempt to implement it in a sensitive way," he said. "I hope that is so."
Klundt said she believes the public will be quick to adapt to the changes, likening it to efforts to promote seat belt usage.
"You know what, everybody wears their seat belt now, it's no big deal," she said. "I kind of feel like this is one of those situations."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TRAVEL/01/15/border.identifica
tion/index.html
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/17/Deadline_nears_for_proof_of_citizenship_at_land_borders
Suburb floats new anti-immigrant rule...
Jan 17, 10:18 PM EST
Suburb floats new anti-immigrant rule
FARMERS BRANCH, Texas (AP) -- The Dallas suburb that was blocked by courts from enforcing an ordinance banning landlords from renting to illegal immigrants is jumping back into the fray.
The Farmers Branch City Council plans to consider a new ordinance Tuesday that would require the city and federal government, not the landlords, to determine who is in the country legally, The Dallas Morning News reported on its Web site Thursday.
City leaders first approved a ban on rentals to illegal immigrants in November 2006, then revised it a year ago to include some exemptions. Residents voted in May to approve the rule.
But a federal judge blocked Farmers Branch from enforcing the ordinance after finding city officials had tried to regulate immigration differently from the federal government.
"I am confident this new proposal is consistent with the intent of Farmers Branch voters and will withstand any legal challenges," Mayor Pro Tem Tim O'Hare told The Associated Press in an e-mail.
The new proposal would require adults wanting to lease a house or apartment to get an occupancy license from the city and provide information about their citizenship or legal status. The information would be checked against a federal database to determine whether applicants were in the country legally.
If federal authorities can't confirm a person has permission to live in the country, the license holder and landlord would be notified. The renter would have 60 days to provide proof of legal status.
Violations of the ordinance could result in a fine as high as $500 per day.
Nationwide, more than 100 cities or counties have proposed, passed or rejected laws prohibiting landlords from leasing to illegal immigrants, penalizing businesses that employ undocumented workers or training police to enforce immigration laws.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IMMIGRATION_TEX
AS?SITE=CAANR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/18/Suburb_floats_new_antiimmigrant_rule
Suburb floats new anti-immigrant rule
FARMERS BRANCH, Texas (AP) -- The Dallas suburb that was blocked by courts from enforcing an ordinance banning landlords from renting to illegal immigrants is jumping back into the fray.
The Farmers Branch City Council plans to consider a new ordinance Tuesday that would require the city and federal government, not the landlords, to determine who is in the country legally, The Dallas Morning News reported on its Web site Thursday.
City leaders first approved a ban on rentals to illegal immigrants in November 2006, then revised it a year ago to include some exemptions. Residents voted in May to approve the rule.
But a federal judge blocked Farmers Branch from enforcing the ordinance after finding city officials had tried to regulate immigration differently from the federal government.
"I am confident this new proposal is consistent with the intent of Farmers Branch voters and will withstand any legal challenges," Mayor Pro Tem Tim O'Hare told The Associated Press in an e-mail.
The new proposal would require adults wanting to lease a house or apartment to get an occupancy license from the city and provide information about their citizenship or legal status. The information would be checked against a federal database to determine whether applicants were in the country legally.
If federal authorities can't confirm a person has permission to live in the country, the license holder and landlord would be notified. The renter would have 60 days to provide proof of legal status.
Violations of the ordinance could result in a fine as high as $500 per day.
Nationwide, more than 100 cities or counties have proposed, passed or rejected laws prohibiting landlords from leasing to illegal immigrants, penalizing businesses that employ undocumented workers or training police to enforce immigration laws.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IMMIGRATION_TEX
AS?SITE=CAANR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/18/Suburb_floats_new_antiimmigrant_rule
Border Security: Feds Need To Step Up With Funding...
Border security Feds need to step up with funding El Paso Times Staff Article Launched: 01/19/2008 12:00:00 AM MST
Cash-strapped border law-enforcement agencies are treading water when it comes to border-security operations because state money for those operations has dried up.
You might recall that the Legislature last year approved $110 million to go toward border-security efforts. While that's a good step, it isn't a whole lot of money, considering the scope of border-security concerns. And, only about $2 million has been sent in grants to local departments to spend on border security.
Cmdr. Claudio "Tony" Morales heads up border-security operations in the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. He said, "Everything is at a standstill right now. We're not being funded currently."
That funding needs to be expedited. A spokeswoman in Gov. Perry's office said that efforts were being made to smooth out the grant process and that more money for local departments is "forthcoming."
What state officials must keep in mind here is that threats to the border don't sit around and wait for funding. Those threats are constant and increasing. Border security depends in large part on state officials keeping up with funding needs and demands and expediting the process as much as possible.
This border security hiatus also emphasizes another ongoing concern.
Border security is and should be the purview of the federal government. But ever since 9/11, the feds haven't been noticeably eager to shoulder that burden. So, state and local governments, particularly those along the border and in the most immediate danger, have to take the initiative. That leads to backing state governments into the corner and giving them little choice about what to do.
If states want something done about border security, they have to do it themselves. So governors and state legislatures have to come up with their own plans and money.
This isn't to say that the feds aren't making progress. The ranks of the Border Patrol are being increased and other measures are being taken. But there are also boondoggles typical of a vast, lumbering bureaucracy such as the Homeland Security Department. An example is the heavy-handed approach being used by the government in preparing land in South Texas for the infamous border wall. In areas such as Eagle Pass, the feds are working against the people and local governments instead of with them.
Local governments and the feds have to work together to promote as seamless a border-security plan as possible. But federal money is essential to such efforts.
The federal government certainly has its own set of fiscal worries, from expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a slipping economy to major indebtedness at home and abroad.
But the federal government also has a major financial obligation when it comes to border security. It must meet that obligation.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/opinion/ci_8011444
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/19/Border_Security_Feds_Need_To_Step_Up_With_Funding
Cash-strapped border law-enforcement agencies are treading water when it comes to border-security operations because state money for those operations has dried up.
You might recall that the Legislature last year approved $110 million to go toward border-security efforts. While that's a good step, it isn't a whole lot of money, considering the scope of border-security concerns. And, only about $2 million has been sent in grants to local departments to spend on border security.
Cmdr. Claudio "Tony" Morales heads up border-security operations in the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. He said, "Everything is at a standstill right now. We're not being funded currently."
That funding needs to be expedited. A spokeswoman in Gov. Perry's office said that efforts were being made to smooth out the grant process and that more money for local departments is "forthcoming."
What state officials must keep in mind here is that threats to the border don't sit around and wait for funding. Those threats are constant and increasing. Border security depends in large part on state officials keeping up with funding needs and demands and expediting the process as much as possible.
This border security hiatus also emphasizes another ongoing concern.
Border security is and should be the purview of the federal government. But ever since 9/11, the feds haven't been noticeably eager to shoulder that burden. So, state and local governments, particularly those along the border and in the most immediate danger, have to take the initiative. That leads to backing state governments into the corner and giving them little choice about what to do.
If states want something done about border security, they have to do it themselves. So governors and state legislatures have to come up with their own plans and money.
This isn't to say that the feds aren't making progress. The ranks of the Border Patrol are being increased and other measures are being taken. But there are also boondoggles typical of a vast, lumbering bureaucracy such as the Homeland Security Department. An example is the heavy-handed approach being used by the government in preparing land in South Texas for the infamous border wall. In areas such as Eagle Pass, the feds are working against the people and local governments instead of with them.
Local governments and the feds have to work together to promote as seamless a border-security plan as possible. But federal money is essential to such efforts.
The federal government certainly has its own set of fiscal worries, from expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a slipping economy to major indebtedness at home and abroad.
But the federal government also has a major financial obligation when it comes to border security. It must meet that obligation.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/opinion/ci_8011444
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/19/Border_Security_Feds_Need_To_Step_Up_With_Funding
GAO reports persistent risks at borders...
GAO reports persistent risks at borders
By Sara A. Carter
January 15, 2008
Serious national security weaknesses still plague the nation's border inspection system and ports of entry, increasing the potential for terrorists, criminals and illegal goods to enter the country undetected, according to testimony provided in a Government Accountability Office report this month.
Richard Stana, the GAO's Homeland Security and Justice director, stated in the report — based on testimony he gave to the House Homeland Security Committee — that video surveillance and investigations at eight ports of entry revealed significant security risks and failures.
"Without checking the identity, citizenship, and admissibility of travelers, there is an increased potential that dangerous people and inadmissible goods may enter the country and cause harm to American citizens and the economy," Mr. Stana said. "Alien smuggling organizations have been aware of weaknesses in CBP's inspection procedures and they have trained operatives to take advantage of these weaknesses."
Mr. Stana's testimony this month is based on the November GAO report "Border Security, Despite Progress, Weaknesses in Traveler Inspections Exist at our Nation's Ports of Entry."
A review of videotapes from 150 large and small ports of entry in mid-2006 found numerous vulnerabilities in traveler inspection procedures. The videotapes showed CBP officers in one instance waving in vehicles into the U.S. "without stopping the vehicle or interviewing the driver or its passengers as required."
Other examples showed motorcycles passing through inspection lanes without stopping and making any contact with an officer. The report also noted that CBP officers waved traffic through the lane while they were replacing another officer getting off duty and that at times CBP inspectors waved pedestrians through the lane without looking at them, making verbal contact, or inspecting travel documents.
CBP spokesman Michael Friel said that the agency is taking seriously Mr. Stana's testimony and working to correct the problems.
"We are facing challenges head on with important initiatives both at and between our ports of entry," Mr. Friel said in reference to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which requires travelers to present a passport or other documentation that denotes identity and citizenship when entering the U.S. "We're certainly moving as an agency with a sense of urgency. We're moving smarter to get the right technology [and] hiring the right personnel."
Despite the progress made by CBP since the September 11 terrorist attacks — including the installation of additional technology that aided in inspecting vehicles for smuggled aliens, illicit cargo and checking traveler documents against law-enforcement databases — CBP concluded "that several thousand inadmissible aliens and other violators entered the country at air and land ports of entry in fiscal year 2006."
Numerous CBP agents and inspectors interviewed by The Washington Times said the number of illegal entries may be much greater than "several thousand" reported by their own agency.
In September, The Times disclosed internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection documents ordering CBP inspectors in El Paso, Texas, to abbreviate national security checks to speed up travel between the U.S. and Mexico to relieve commerce delays.
Mr. Stana noted in his testimony that CBP inspectors have "a difficult task given the high volume of travelers and goods" and frequently carry out their responsibilities "with little time to make decisions about admitting individuals into the country because they also face pressure to facilitate the cross-border movement of millions of legitimate travelers and billions of dollars in international trade."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl
e?AID=/20080115/NATION/748519015/1002
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/19/GAO_reports_persistent_risks_at_borders
By Sara A. Carter
January 15, 2008
Serious national security weaknesses still plague the nation's border inspection system and ports of entry, increasing the potential for terrorists, criminals and illegal goods to enter the country undetected, according to testimony provided in a Government Accountability Office report this month.
Richard Stana, the GAO's Homeland Security and Justice director, stated in the report — based on testimony he gave to the House Homeland Security Committee — that video surveillance and investigations at eight ports of entry revealed significant security risks and failures.
"Without checking the identity, citizenship, and admissibility of travelers, there is an increased potential that dangerous people and inadmissible goods may enter the country and cause harm to American citizens and the economy," Mr. Stana said. "Alien smuggling organizations have been aware of weaknesses in CBP's inspection procedures and they have trained operatives to take advantage of these weaknesses."
Mr. Stana's testimony this month is based on the November GAO report "Border Security, Despite Progress, Weaknesses in Traveler Inspections Exist at our Nation's Ports of Entry."
A review of videotapes from 150 large and small ports of entry in mid-2006 found numerous vulnerabilities in traveler inspection procedures. The videotapes showed CBP officers in one instance waving in vehicles into the U.S. "without stopping the vehicle or interviewing the driver or its passengers as required."
Other examples showed motorcycles passing through inspection lanes without stopping and making any contact with an officer. The report also noted that CBP officers waved traffic through the lane while they were replacing another officer getting off duty and that at times CBP inspectors waved pedestrians through the lane without looking at them, making verbal contact, or inspecting travel documents.
CBP spokesman Michael Friel said that the agency is taking seriously Mr. Stana's testimony and working to correct the problems.
"We are facing challenges head on with important initiatives both at and between our ports of entry," Mr. Friel said in reference to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which requires travelers to present a passport or other documentation that denotes identity and citizenship when entering the U.S. "We're certainly moving as an agency with a sense of urgency. We're moving smarter to get the right technology [and] hiring the right personnel."
Despite the progress made by CBP since the September 11 terrorist attacks — including the installation of additional technology that aided in inspecting vehicles for smuggled aliens, illicit cargo and checking traveler documents against law-enforcement databases — CBP concluded "that several thousand inadmissible aliens and other violators entered the country at air and land ports of entry in fiscal year 2006."
Numerous CBP agents and inspectors interviewed by The Washington Times said the number of illegal entries may be much greater than "several thousand" reported by their own agency.
In September, The Times disclosed internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection documents ordering CBP inspectors in El Paso, Texas, to abbreviate national security checks to speed up travel between the U.S. and Mexico to relieve commerce delays.
Mr. Stana noted in his testimony that CBP inspectors have "a difficult task given the high volume of travelers and goods" and frequently carry out their responsibilities "with little time to make decisions about admitting individuals into the country because they also face pressure to facilitate the cross-border movement of millions of legitimate travelers and billions of dollars in international trade."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/articl
e?AID=/20080115/NATION/748519015/1002
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/19/GAO_reports_persistent_risks_at_borders
Prosecutors decry Mexico loophole...
Prosecutors decry Mexico loophole
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A methamphetamine dealer gunned down a deputy during a traffic stop in Southern California. A man in Arizona killed his ex-girlfriend's parents and brother and snatched his children. A man suffocated his baby daughter and left her body in a tool bag on an expressway overpass near Chicago.
Ordinarily, these would be death-penalty cases. But these men fled to Mexico, thereby escaping the possibility of execution.
The reason: Mexico refuses to return anyone to the United States unless the United States gives assurances it won't seek the death penalty — a 30-year-old policy that rankles some American prosecutors and enrages victims' families.
"We find it extremely disturbing that the Mexican government would dictate to us, in Arizona, how we would enforce our laws at the same time they are complaining about our immigration laws," said Barnett Lotstein, special assistant to the prosecutor in Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix.
"Even in the most egregious cases, the Mexican authorities say, 'No way,' and that's not justice. That's an interference of Mexican authorities in our judicial process in Arizona."
It might be about to happen again: A Marine accused of murdering a pregnant comrade in North Carolina and burning her remains in his back yard is thought to have fled to Mexico. Prosecutors said they have not decided whether to seek the death penalty. But if the Marine is captured in Mexico, capital punishment will be off the table.
Fugitives trying to escape the long arm of the law have been making runs for the border ever since frontier days, a practice romanticized in countless Hollywood Westerns.
Mexico routinely returns fugitives to the United States to face justice. But under a 1978 treaty with the United States, Mexico, which has no death penalty, will not extradite anyone facing possible execution. To get their hands on a fugitive, U.S. prosecutors must agree to seek no more than life in prison.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080118/NAT
ION/204754316
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/19/Prosecutors_decry_Mexico_loophole
SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A methamphetamine dealer gunned down a deputy during a traffic stop in Southern California. A man in Arizona killed his ex-girlfriend's parents and brother and snatched his children. A man suffocated his baby daughter and left her body in a tool bag on an expressway overpass near Chicago.
Ordinarily, these would be death-penalty cases. But these men fled to Mexico, thereby escaping the possibility of execution.
The reason: Mexico refuses to return anyone to the United States unless the United States gives assurances it won't seek the death penalty — a 30-year-old policy that rankles some American prosecutors and enrages victims' families.
"We find it extremely disturbing that the Mexican government would dictate to us, in Arizona, how we would enforce our laws at the same time they are complaining about our immigration laws," said Barnett Lotstein, special assistant to the prosecutor in Maricopa County, Ariz., which includes Phoenix.
"Even in the most egregious cases, the Mexican authorities say, 'No way,' and that's not justice. That's an interference of Mexican authorities in our judicial process in Arizona."
It might be about to happen again: A Marine accused of murdering a pregnant comrade in North Carolina and burning her remains in his back yard is thought to have fled to Mexico. Prosecutors said they have not decided whether to seek the death penalty. But if the Marine is captured in Mexico, capital punishment will be off the table.
Fugitives trying to escape the long arm of the law have been making runs for the border ever since frontier days, a practice romanticized in countless Hollywood Westerns.
Mexico routinely returns fugitives to the United States to face justice. But under a 1978 treaty with the United States, Mexico, which has no death penalty, will not extradite anyone facing possible execution. To get their hands on a fugitive, U.S. prosecutors must agree to seek no more than life in prison.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20080118/NAT
ION/204754316
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/19/Prosecutors_decry_Mexico_loophole
An open-borders dictionary...
An open-borders dictionary
By Mark Cromer
January 18, 2008
As the freewheeling primaries promise a wide-open presidential race that may stretch even beyond Super Tuesday next month, I thought it might be helpful to offer the candidates a cheat-sheet of easy-to-use-cliches when addressing the hot-button issue of immigration.
Granted, some of the contenders are polished pros when it comes to using meaningless rhetoric on immigration. Others have turned into semantic gymnasts, like Sen. John "Straight Talk" McCain, who now insists with a straight face that he never supported amnesty. Or his esteemed colleague from New York, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose position on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants makes her husband's infamous "it depends what your definition of is, is" sound coherent.
But even veteran political contortionists can use a little brush-up on sure-fire phrases that pander to the open-borders crowd, so this should come in handy as the campaign roles into the Southwest:
"Living in the shadows": The gold standard of public utterances on illegal immigration that deftly defies reality while evoking Dickensian imagery to pull heart strings, use it liberally — but be ready in the unlikely event a reporter asks how public schools, hospitals and entire blue-collar industries like construction qualify as "shadows."
"The system is broken:" This gem is suitable for high-rotation use as well; but again, caution is warranted. Obviously steer clear of any effort to explain what you mean by "broken," lest you have to answer how it was broken and by whom. Have staff investigate potential answers in case you're asked if a system that successfully processes one million legal immigrants into the country every year is really broken just because five million more illegal immigrants that same year didn't want to obey our laws?
"Humane immigration reform": This is coded campaign-speak at its best and replaces "comprehensive immigration reform," which landed about as smoothly on the president's desk in 2007 as The Hindenburg did in New Jersey 70 years earlier. This less clinical sounding phrase describes the same mass amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, but is sugared up to make it easier for John Q. Public to swallow.
"Immigration is an emotional issue": A favorite of men in the 1950s who wanted to simultaneously patronize and belittle women who expressed their opinions at a volume anywhere north of a whisper by calling them "emotional." This retro-putdown is perfect to backhand constituents who are furious over the government's refusal to enforce the law and secure the borders. When using this line, try to strike Richard Benjamin's smarmy tone in "Diary of a Mad Housewife" for its full effect.
"Divisive rhetoric": Currently a standard on Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain's playlists, this cliche offers an echo of high-minded leadership yet limits exposure to blowback by being vague as to what actually is "divisive" about demanding the laws be enforced.
"Fear of the brown 'other' ": Great for those moments that call for tossing a racially-charged grenade into the American melting pot; it accuses the white majority in America of clinging to their inner bigot out of fear of seeing "brown" people in their midst. Note: this line is best used in front of white, uptown audiences who rarely see "brown others" outside of their nannies and gardeners. Avoid using it in working-class neighborhoods where Americans of every ethnic shade have been seriously impacted by illegal immigration.
"Jobs Americans won't do": Bush administration wordsmiths tinkered with this slap in the face of American workers and came up with "jobs Americans aren't doing," which still offers cover when making the case for the mass importation of no-skill and low-skill workers at the behest of business interests. Feel free to use the previous "won't do" version when addressing members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Manhattan Institute or the Wall Street Journal editorial board, as it's always good for a laugh among friends.
"Background checks on illegal immigrants": Smoke and mirrors at its finest, this line will allow you to sound diligent by assuring voters that your administration will make sure each and every one of the tens of millions of people who broke into the country and live here illegally by using a wide array of fraudulent documents are otherwise of the finest moral character. Whatever you do, don't attempt to explain what federal agency will conduct these background checks, how much it will cost the American taxpayer or how accurate they are likely to be. That will only remind citizens that this is the same brain trust that issued the September 11 hijackers visas, allowed them to obtain valid driver's licenses and ignored warnings about their activities before the attack — and there were only 19 of them.
Mark Cromer is a Senior Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar
ticle?AID=/20080118/EDITORIAL/434959524
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/19/An_openborders_dictionary
By Mark Cromer
January 18, 2008
As the freewheeling primaries promise a wide-open presidential race that may stretch even beyond Super Tuesday next month, I thought it might be helpful to offer the candidates a cheat-sheet of easy-to-use-cliches when addressing the hot-button issue of immigration.
Granted, some of the contenders are polished pros when it comes to using meaningless rhetoric on immigration. Others have turned into semantic gymnasts, like Sen. John "Straight Talk" McCain, who now insists with a straight face that he never supported amnesty. Or his esteemed colleague from New York, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose position on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants makes her husband's infamous "it depends what your definition of is, is" sound coherent.
But even veteran political contortionists can use a little brush-up on sure-fire phrases that pander to the open-borders crowd, so this should come in handy as the campaign roles into the Southwest:
"Living in the shadows": The gold standard of public utterances on illegal immigration that deftly defies reality while evoking Dickensian imagery to pull heart strings, use it liberally — but be ready in the unlikely event a reporter asks how public schools, hospitals and entire blue-collar industries like construction qualify as "shadows."
"The system is broken:" This gem is suitable for high-rotation use as well; but again, caution is warranted. Obviously steer clear of any effort to explain what you mean by "broken," lest you have to answer how it was broken and by whom. Have staff investigate potential answers in case you're asked if a system that successfully processes one million legal immigrants into the country every year is really broken just because five million more illegal immigrants that same year didn't want to obey our laws?
"Humane immigration reform": This is coded campaign-speak at its best and replaces "comprehensive immigration reform," which landed about as smoothly on the president's desk in 2007 as The Hindenburg did in New Jersey 70 years earlier. This less clinical sounding phrase describes the same mass amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, but is sugared up to make it easier for John Q. Public to swallow.
"Immigration is an emotional issue": A favorite of men in the 1950s who wanted to simultaneously patronize and belittle women who expressed their opinions at a volume anywhere north of a whisper by calling them "emotional." This retro-putdown is perfect to backhand constituents who are furious over the government's refusal to enforce the law and secure the borders. When using this line, try to strike Richard Benjamin's smarmy tone in "Diary of a Mad Housewife" for its full effect.
"Divisive rhetoric": Currently a standard on Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain's playlists, this cliche offers an echo of high-minded leadership yet limits exposure to blowback by being vague as to what actually is "divisive" about demanding the laws be enforced.
"Fear of the brown 'other' ": Great for those moments that call for tossing a racially-charged grenade into the American melting pot; it accuses the white majority in America of clinging to their inner bigot out of fear of seeing "brown" people in their midst. Note: this line is best used in front of white, uptown audiences who rarely see "brown others" outside of their nannies and gardeners. Avoid using it in working-class neighborhoods where Americans of every ethnic shade have been seriously impacted by illegal immigration.
"Jobs Americans won't do": Bush administration wordsmiths tinkered with this slap in the face of American workers and came up with "jobs Americans aren't doing," which still offers cover when making the case for the mass importation of no-skill and low-skill workers at the behest of business interests. Feel free to use the previous "won't do" version when addressing members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Manhattan Institute or the Wall Street Journal editorial board, as it's always good for a laugh among friends.
"Background checks on illegal immigrants": Smoke and mirrors at its finest, this line will allow you to sound diligent by assuring voters that your administration will make sure each and every one of the tens of millions of people who broke into the country and live here illegally by using a wide array of fraudulent documents are otherwise of the finest moral character. Whatever you do, don't attempt to explain what federal agency will conduct these background checks, how much it will cost the American taxpayer or how accurate they are likely to be. That will only remind citizens that this is the same brain trust that issued the September 11 hijackers visas, allowed them to obtain valid driver's licenses and ignored warnings about their activities before the attack — and there were only 19 of them.
Mark Cromer is a Senior Writing Fellow for Californians for Population Stabilization.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar
ticle?AID=/20080118/EDITORIAL/434959524
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/19/An_openborders_dictionary
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Impacts of Illegal Immigration: Diseases
Impacts of Illegal Immigration: Diseases
Impacts of Illegal Immigration: Diseases
Legal immigrants are required to have medical screening to ensure that they do not bring any contagious diseases into the United States. Illegal aliens are not screened and many are carrying horrific third world diseases that do not belong in the USA. Many of these diseases are highly contagious and will infect citizens that come in contact with an infected illegal alien. This has already happened in restaurants, schools, and police forces.
Malaria was eradicated from the USA in the 1940s but recently there were outbreaks in southern California, New Jersey, New York City, and Houston. Additionally, Malaria tainted blood has been discovered in the blood supply.
Dengue was first recognized in the 1950s, affects most Asian countries and has become a leading cause of death among children in the infected areas. Heretofore unknown in the US, Dengue outbreaks have now occurred in the United States.
Leprosy, a scourge of Biblical days, is caused by a bacillus agent and is now know as Hansen's Disease. In the 40 years prior to 2002, there were only 900 total cases of leprosy in the US. In the following three years there have been 9,000 cases and most were illegal aliens.
As noted in the article Leprosy in America: new cause for concern by Dr. William Levis, head of the New York Hansen's Disease Clinic. "It's creeping into the U.S. ... This is a real phenomenon. It's a public health threat. New York is endemic now, and nobody's noticed." In the same article, Dr. Terry Williams, who runs a Houston-based clinic serving leprosy patients across southern Texas, said that the bulk of the cases treated by his clinic were immigrants. "A lot of our cases are imported," he said. "We see patients from everywhere--Africa, the Philippines, China, South America." (emphasis added)
Hepatitis A-E is a viral infection that primarily attacks the liver. In 2004, more than 650 people contacted Hepatitis A at a single Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant in Pennsylvania. Four latter died. Hepatitis B is one of the major diseases of mankind and is a serious global public health problem. It is estimated that 2 BILLION people are infected and about one million persons die each year. The new vaccine is only 95% effective in preventing an infection and will not cure a person who already has Hepatitis B, which results in a lifelong infection, cirrhosis (scarring) of the liver, liver cancer, liver failure, and early death. An estimated 1.3 million people in the US are currently infected. No vaccine is currently available to prevent Hepatitis C-E and treatment for chronic Hepatitis C costs about $1,500 per person.
Tuberculosis (TB) kills approximately 2 million people each year. It is estimated that between 2002 and 2020, approximately 1,000,000,000 people will be newly infected, over 150 million people will get sick, and 36 million will die. TB is a highly contagious disease. Like the common cold, it spreads through the air. When infectious people cough, sneeze, talk or spit, they propel TB germs, known as bacilli, into the air. Each person with active TB will infect on average between 10 and 15 people every year.
The United States currently has one of the lowest rates of TB in the world. Mexico has 10 times the rate of prevalence and many African countries along with Afghanistan, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Indonesia have rates that are 100 – 150 times higher. Making matters worse, a few years ago a Multi-Drug-Resistant (MDR) strain of TB has emerged that is resistant to all standard anti-TB drugs. Treating a single case of MDR TB costs over $250,000 and as much as $1,200,000 per person, and even with treatment about half of the patients with MDR-TB prematurely die.
In an article in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., Dr. Reuben Granich, a lead investigator for the CDC commented on MDR-TB:
"Evidence of it has surfaced in 38 of 61 California health jurisdictions, and it could ‘threaten the efficacy of TB control efforts,' Granich said. The infected were said to be four times as likely to die from the disease and twice as likely to transmit the disease to others ... Reluctant to label the infected as ‘illegal' or even ‘undocumented' aliens, the report notes that of the 407 known cases of MDR-TB, 84% were ‘foreign-born' patients, mainly from Mexico and the Philippines who'd been in the U.S. less than five years. The percentage of TB cases among the ‘foreign-born' jumped from 29% in 1993 to 53% as of last year."
Recently, there was a TB Outbreak In Oklahoma City in a hospital affecting thousands.
Hopefully, this will not be the new extensively drug-resistant XDR strain just being brought in by illegal aliens (now 4% of US cases) and which is currently impossible to cure at any cost. In any case, it would not be surprising to find that the source of the outbreak is an illegal alien working in the hospital or an infected resident worker who became infected through contact with an infected illegal alien since the TB rate for residents in the USA is very low.
For more information on TB and the link to illegal aliens, see:
Is CDC covering up skyrocketing TB rate?
Immigration helps diseases spread in Valley
Mayor favors tougher stance against illegals.
Chagas Disease (American Trypanosomiasis), endemic to South and Central America, is spread by infected triatomine bugs, known as the "kissing bugs," that bite people. It was unknown in the United States until fairly recently. It is now estimated that between 100,000 and 500,000 people in the US have Chagas Disease. Who is infected? Mostly illegal aliens.
Since Chagas Disease is basically unknown outside of the illegal alien community most doctors won't recognize it and the blood supply just started being screened for it. Most cases of Chagas Disease that occur in patients other than illegal aliens are thought to be contracted from tainted blood – blood sold by illegal aliens with Chagas Disease before the blood supply started being tested for it as of August of 2006.
HIV The number of illegal Mexican and Central American immigrants with HIV or AIDS is unknown, mostly because researchers rarely ask about immigration status. However, it is known that the rate of HIV infection among Latino women in California is about twice the rate of white women. At one free California health clinic, all of the women have HIV or AIDS. Most are Mexican or Central American "immigrants."
Then there is Schistosomiasis, Guinea Worm Infection, Whooping cough, Cysticercosis, Morgellon's, and a host of others.
All these diseases and pathogens, and a plethora of others that are not endemic to the US, are being brought in by unscreened illegal aliens who then spread them to an unsuspecting population. These diseases will give you something to think about the next time you are eating at a restaurant with the grunt work being done by illegal aliens who didn't have medical screening before preparing and handling your food.
As recently reported in Hepatitis Risk for East Asians in New York, among east Asian immigrants in New York City, one person in seven carries the Hepatitis B virus and that researchers at New York Univ. School of Medicine, found that 15% of east Asians in New York - as many as 100,000 people - are chronic hepatitis carriers, with the rate highest among immigrants from China. That infection rate is 35 times the rate found in the general population. The article did not mention how many of the infected people were illegal aliens but odds are the vast majority were.
Health reporter Bill Sardi noted:
"Recently an outbreak of hepatitis traced to Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant, in Pennsylvania was inexplicably traced to contaminated green onions, not the most obvious cause, undocumented food workers who harbored Hepatitis. For the most part, Hepatitis is a blood-borne, not a food-borne disease. The Hepatitis outbreak infected over 650 individuals, caused 9,000 Americans to undergo immune globulin shots, and killed 4 people.
If Americans found out restaurants can commonly infect their customers from food workers, it would be a serious blow to the restaurant industry. Better blame the green onions. Let's concede the onions, grown in Mexico, were contaminated from fecal material containing Hepatitis. Did all the green onions imported from Mexico end up in one single restaurant? There were no other outbreaks of Hepatitis anywhere elsewhere from green onions. There were 13 restaurant workers who had Hepatitis. They were the likely source of the transmitted infection.
While the unions resist mandatory Hepatitis screening and vaccination for food workers, the government mandates that newborn babies be jabbed with Hepatitis vaccines before they can leave the hospital. The logic in this defies understanding until one realizes that newborn babies of immigrant families can more easily acquire Hepatitis so all babies are given the vaccines."
As noted in a May 2006 article, Milford taking harsher stance against illegals than Framingham, increased levels of TB are being noted and some municipalities are finally starting to take action to protect their citizens.
As unfortunate as it may be, the US can not bear the financial burden for treating the world's sick, ill, and infected populace, but the Govt. should be protecting American citizens from the diseases being brought in by illegal aliens.
How many more citizens will come down with Hepatitis, Leprosy, E-coli, or Chagas Disease from contact with an infected illegal alien before something is done? How many school children must get TB before our government takes action to protect them?
Remember the movie Alien and how the creature popped out of infected bodies? The Guinea Worm is a mini-version. Maybe your kids can take advantage of the experience on show & tell day.
If we screen legal aliens for contagious diseases, why are we allowing unscreened and contagious illegal aliens to roam the country infecting the citizenry?
Diseases - collateral damage from a "victimless crime" to save ten cents on a head of lettuce.
http://www.usillegalaliens.com/impacts_of_illegal_immi
gration_diseases.html
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/07/Impacts_of_Illegal_Immigration_Diseases#addcomment
Impacts of Illegal Immigration: Diseases
Legal immigrants are required to have medical screening to ensure that they do not bring any contagious diseases into the United States. Illegal aliens are not screened and many are carrying horrific third world diseases that do not belong in the USA. Many of these diseases are highly contagious and will infect citizens that come in contact with an infected illegal alien. This has already happened in restaurants, schools, and police forces.
Malaria was eradicated from the USA in the 1940s but recently there were outbreaks in southern California, New Jersey, New York City, and Houston. Additionally, Malaria tainted blood has been discovered in the blood supply.
Dengue was first recognized in the 1950s, affects most Asian countries and has become a leading cause of death among children in the infected areas. Heretofore unknown in the US, Dengue outbreaks have now occurred in the United States.
Leprosy, a scourge of Biblical days, is caused by a bacillus agent and is now know as Hansen's Disease. In the 40 years prior to 2002, there were only 900 total cases of leprosy in the US. In the following three years there have been 9,000 cases and most were illegal aliens.
As noted in the article Leprosy in America: new cause for concern by Dr. William Levis, head of the New York Hansen's Disease Clinic. "It's creeping into the U.S. ... This is a real phenomenon. It's a public health threat. New York is endemic now, and nobody's noticed." In the same article, Dr. Terry Williams, who runs a Houston-based clinic serving leprosy patients across southern Texas, said that the bulk of the cases treated by his clinic were immigrants. "A lot of our cases are imported," he said. "We see patients from everywhere--Africa, the Philippines, China, South America." (emphasis added)
Hepatitis A-E is a viral infection that primarily attacks the liver. In 2004, more than 650 people contacted Hepatitis A at a single Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant in Pennsylvania. Four latter died. Hepatitis B is one of the major diseases of mankind and is a serious global public health problem. It is estimated that 2 BILLION people are infected and about one million persons die each year. The new vaccine is only 95% effective in preventing an infection and will not cure a person who already has Hepatitis B, which results in a lifelong infection, cirrhosis (scarring) of the liver, liver cancer, liver failure, and early death. An estimated 1.3 million people in the US are currently infected. No vaccine is currently available to prevent Hepatitis C-E and treatment for chronic Hepatitis C costs about $1,500 per person.
Tuberculosis (TB) kills approximately 2 million people each year. It is estimated that between 2002 and 2020, approximately 1,000,000,000 people will be newly infected, over 150 million people will get sick, and 36 million will die. TB is a highly contagious disease. Like the common cold, it spreads through the air. When infectious people cough, sneeze, talk or spit, they propel TB germs, known as bacilli, into the air. Each person with active TB will infect on average between 10 and 15 people every year.
The United States currently has one of the lowest rates of TB in the world. Mexico has 10 times the rate of prevalence and many African countries along with Afghanistan, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Indonesia have rates that are 100 – 150 times higher. Making matters worse, a few years ago a Multi-Drug-Resistant (MDR) strain of TB has emerged that is resistant to all standard anti-TB drugs. Treating a single case of MDR TB costs over $250,000 and as much as $1,200,000 per person, and even with treatment about half of the patients with MDR-TB prematurely die.
In an article in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., Dr. Reuben Granich, a lead investigator for the CDC commented on MDR-TB:
"Evidence of it has surfaced in 38 of 61 California health jurisdictions, and it could ‘threaten the efficacy of TB control efforts,' Granich said. The infected were said to be four times as likely to die from the disease and twice as likely to transmit the disease to others ... Reluctant to label the infected as ‘illegal' or even ‘undocumented' aliens, the report notes that of the 407 known cases of MDR-TB, 84% were ‘foreign-born' patients, mainly from Mexico and the Philippines who'd been in the U.S. less than five years. The percentage of TB cases among the ‘foreign-born' jumped from 29% in 1993 to 53% as of last year."
Recently, there was a TB Outbreak In Oklahoma City in a hospital affecting thousands.
Hopefully, this will not be the new extensively drug-resistant XDR strain just being brought in by illegal aliens (now 4% of US cases) and which is currently impossible to cure at any cost. In any case, it would not be surprising to find that the source of the outbreak is an illegal alien working in the hospital or an infected resident worker who became infected through contact with an infected illegal alien since the TB rate for residents in the USA is very low.
For more information on TB and the link to illegal aliens, see:
Is CDC covering up skyrocketing TB rate?
Immigration helps diseases spread in Valley
Mayor favors tougher stance against illegals.
Chagas Disease (American Trypanosomiasis), endemic to South and Central America, is spread by infected triatomine bugs, known as the "kissing bugs," that bite people. It was unknown in the United States until fairly recently. It is now estimated that between 100,000 and 500,000 people in the US have Chagas Disease. Who is infected? Mostly illegal aliens.
Since Chagas Disease is basically unknown outside of the illegal alien community most doctors won't recognize it and the blood supply just started being screened for it. Most cases of Chagas Disease that occur in patients other than illegal aliens are thought to be contracted from tainted blood – blood sold by illegal aliens with Chagas Disease before the blood supply started being tested for it as of August of 2006.
HIV The number of illegal Mexican and Central American immigrants with HIV or AIDS is unknown, mostly because researchers rarely ask about immigration status. However, it is known that the rate of HIV infection among Latino women in California is about twice the rate of white women. At one free California health clinic, all of the women have HIV or AIDS. Most are Mexican or Central American "immigrants."
Then there is Schistosomiasis, Guinea Worm Infection, Whooping cough, Cysticercosis, Morgellon's, and a host of others.
All these diseases and pathogens, and a plethora of others that are not endemic to the US, are being brought in by unscreened illegal aliens who then spread them to an unsuspecting population. These diseases will give you something to think about the next time you are eating at a restaurant with the grunt work being done by illegal aliens who didn't have medical screening before preparing and handling your food.
As recently reported in Hepatitis Risk for East Asians in New York, among east Asian immigrants in New York City, one person in seven carries the Hepatitis B virus and that researchers at New York Univ. School of Medicine, found that 15% of east Asians in New York - as many as 100,000 people - are chronic hepatitis carriers, with the rate highest among immigrants from China. That infection rate is 35 times the rate found in the general population. The article did not mention how many of the infected people were illegal aliens but odds are the vast majority were.
Health reporter Bill Sardi noted:
"Recently an outbreak of hepatitis traced to Chi-Chi's Mexican restaurant, in Pennsylvania was inexplicably traced to contaminated green onions, not the most obvious cause, undocumented food workers who harbored Hepatitis. For the most part, Hepatitis is a blood-borne, not a food-borne disease. The Hepatitis outbreak infected over 650 individuals, caused 9,000 Americans to undergo immune globulin shots, and killed 4 people.
If Americans found out restaurants can commonly infect their customers from food workers, it would be a serious blow to the restaurant industry. Better blame the green onions. Let's concede the onions, grown in Mexico, were contaminated from fecal material containing Hepatitis. Did all the green onions imported from Mexico end up in one single restaurant? There were no other outbreaks of Hepatitis anywhere elsewhere from green onions. There were 13 restaurant workers who had Hepatitis. They were the likely source of the transmitted infection.
While the unions resist mandatory Hepatitis screening and vaccination for food workers, the government mandates that newborn babies be jabbed with Hepatitis vaccines before they can leave the hospital. The logic in this defies understanding until one realizes that newborn babies of immigrant families can more easily acquire Hepatitis so all babies are given the vaccines."
As noted in a May 2006 article, Milford taking harsher stance against illegals than Framingham, increased levels of TB are being noted and some municipalities are finally starting to take action to protect their citizens.
As unfortunate as it may be, the US can not bear the financial burden for treating the world's sick, ill, and infected populace, but the Govt. should be protecting American citizens from the diseases being brought in by illegal aliens.
How many more citizens will come down with Hepatitis, Leprosy, E-coli, or Chagas Disease from contact with an infected illegal alien before something is done? How many school children must get TB before our government takes action to protect them?
Remember the movie Alien and how the creature popped out of infected bodies? The Guinea Worm is a mini-version. Maybe your kids can take advantage of the experience on show & tell day.
If we screen legal aliens for contagious diseases, why are we allowing unscreened and contagious illegal aliens to roam the country infecting the citizenry?
Diseases - collateral damage from a "victimless crime" to save ten cents on a head of lettuce.
http://www.usillegalaliens.com/impacts_of_illegal_immi
gration_diseases.html
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/07/Impacts_of_Illegal_Immigration_Diseases#addcomment
The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave...
The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave...
The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave
Heather Mac Donald Why can't our immigration authorities deport the hordes of illegal felons in our cities?
Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet in cities where the crime these aliens commit is highest, the police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of members of a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have sneaked back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and drug trafficking. Police officers know who they are and know that their mere presence in the country is a felony. Yet should a cop arrest an illegal gangbanger for felonious reentry, it is he who will be treated as a criminal, for violating the LAPD's rule against enforcing immigration law.
The LAPD's ban on immigration enforcement mirrors bans in immigrant-saturated cities around the country, from New York and Chicago to San Diego, Austin, and Houston. These "sanctuary policies" generally prohibit city employees, including the cops, from reporting immigration violations to federal authorities.
Such laws testify to the sheer political power of immigrant lobbies, a power so irresistible that police officials shrink from even mentioning the illegal-alien crime wave. "We can't even talk about it," says a frustrated LAPD captain. "People are afraid of a backlash from Hispanics." Another LAPD commander in a predominantly Hispanic, gang-infested district sighs: "I would get a firestorm of criticism if I talked about [enforcing the immigration law against illegals]." Neither captain would speak for attribution.
But however pernicious in themselves, sanctuary rules are a symptom of a much broader disease: the nation's near-total loss of control over immigration policy. Fifty years ago, immigration policy might have driven immigration numbers, but today the numbers drive policy. The nonstop increase of immigration is reshaping the language and the law to dissolve any distinction between legal and illegal aliens and, ultimately, the very idea of national borders.
It is a measure of how topsy-turvy the immigration environment has become that to ask police officials about the illegal-alien crime problem feels like a gross faux pas, not done in polite company. And a police official asked to violate this powerful taboo will give a strangled response—or, as in the case of a New York deputy commissioner, break off communication altogether. Meanwhile, millions of illegal aliens work, shop, travel, and commit crimes in plain view, utterly secure in their de facto immunity from the immigration law.
I asked the Miami Police Department's spokesman, Detective Delrish Moss, about his employer's policy on lawbreaking illegals. In September, the force arrested a Honduran visa violator for seven vicious rapes. The previous year, Miami cops had had the suspect in custody for lewd and lascivious molestation, without checking his immigration status. Had they done so, they would have discovered his visa overstay, a deportable offense, and so could have forestalled the rapes. "We have shied away from unnecessary involvement dealing with immigration issues," explains Moss, choosing his words carefully, "because of our large immigrant population."
Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the illegal-alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is startling. Some examples:
• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.
• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.
• The leadership of the Columbia Lil' Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.'s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.
Good luck finding any reference to such facts in official crime analysis. The LAPD and the L.A. city attorney recently requested an injunction against drug trafficking in Hollywood, targeting the 18th Street Gang and the "non–gang members" who sell drugs in Hollywood for the gang. Those non–gang members are virtually all illegal Mexicans, smuggled into the country by a ring organized by 18th Street bigs. The Mexicans pay off their transportation debts to the gang by selling drugs; many soon realize how lucrative that line of work is and stay in the business.
Cops and prosecutors universally know the immigration status of these non-gang "Hollywood dealers," as the city attorney calls them, but the gang injunction is assiduously silent on the matter. And if a Hollywood officer were to arrest an illegal dealer (known on the street as a "border brother") for his immigration status, or even notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service (since early 2003, absorbed into the new Department of Homeland Security), he would face severe discipline for violating Special Order 40, the city's sanctuary policy.
The ordinarily tough-as-nails former LAPD chief Daryl Gates enacted Special Order 40 in 1979—showing that even the most unapologetic law-and-order cop is no match for immigration advocates. The order prohibits officers from "initiating police action where the objective is to discover the alien status of a person"—in other words, the police may not even ask someone they have arrested about his immigration status until after they have filed criminal charges, nor may they arrest someone for immigration violations. They may not notify immigration authorities about an illegal alien picked up for minor violations. Only if they have already booked an illegal alien for a felony or for multiple misdemeanors may they inquire into his status or report him. The bottom line: a cordon sanitaire between local law enforcement and immigration authorities that creates a safe haven for illegal criminals.
L.A.'s sanctuary law and all others like it contradict a key 1990s policing discovery: the Great Chain of Being in criminal behavior. Pick up a law-violator for a "minor" crime, and you might well prevent a major crime: enforcing graffiti and turnstile-jumping laws nabs you murderers and robbers. Enforcing known immigration violations, such as reentry following deportation, against known felons, would be even more productive. LAPD officers recognize illegal deported gang members all the time—flashing gang signs at court hearings for rival gangbangers, hanging out on the corner, or casing a target. These illegal returnees are, simply by being in the country after deportation, committing a felony (in contrast to garden-variety illegals on their first trip to the U.S., say, who are only committing a misdemeanor). "But if I see a deportee from the Mara Salvatrucha [Salvadoran prison] gang crossing the street, I know I can't touch him," laments a Los Angeles gang officer. Only if the deported felon has given the officer some other reason to stop him, such as an observed narcotics sale, can the cop accost him—but not for the immigration felony.
Though such a policy puts the community at risk, the department's top brass brush off such concerns. No big deal if you see deported gangbangers back on the streets, they say. Just put them under surveillance for "real" crimes and arrest them for those. But surveillance is very manpower-intensive. Where there is an immediate ground for getting a violent felon off the street and for questioning him further, it is absurd to demand that the woefully understaffed LAPD ignore it.
The stated reasons for sanctuary policies are that they encourage illegal-alien crime victims and witnesses to cooperate with cops without fear of deportation, and that they encourage illegals to take advantage of city services like health care and education (to whose maintenance few illegals have contributed a single tax dollar, of course). There has never been any empirical verification that sanctuary laws actually accomplish these goals—and no one has ever suggested not enforcing drug laws, say, for fear of intimidating drug-using crime victims. But in any case, this official rationale could be honored by limiting police use of immigration laws to some subset of immigration violators: deported felons, say, or repeat criminal offenders whose immigration status police already know.
The real reason cities prohibit their cops and other employees from immigration reporting and enforcement is, like nearly everything else in immigration policy, the numbers. The immigrant population has grown so large that public officials are terrified of alienating it, even at the expense of ignoring the law and tolerating violence. In 1996, a breathtaking Los Angeles Times exposé on the 18th Street Gang, which included descriptions of innocent bystanders being murdered by laughing cholos (gang members), revealed the rate of illegal-alien membership in the gang. In response to the public outcry, the Los Angeles City Council ordered the police to reexamine Special Order 40. You would have thought it had suggested reconsidering Roe v. Wade. A police commander warned the council: "This is going to open a significant, heated debate." City Councilwoman Laura Chick put on a brave front: "We mustn't be afraid," she declared firmly.
But of course immigrant pandering trumped public safety. Law-abiding residents of gang-infested neighborhoods may live in terror of the tattooed gangbangers dealing drugs, spraying graffiti, and shooting up rivals outside their homes, but such anxiety can never equal a politician's fear of offending Hispanics. At the start of the reexamination process, LAPD deputy chief John White had argued that allowing the department to work closely with the INS would give cops another tool for getting gang members off the streets. Trying to build a homicide case, say, against an illegal gang member is often futile, he explained, since witnesses fear deadly retaliation if they cooperate with the police. Enforcing an immigration violation would allow the cops to lock up the murderer right now, without putting a witness's life at risk.
But six months later, Deputy Chief White had changed his tune: "Any broadening of the policy gets us into the immigration business," he asserted. "It's a federal law-enforcement issue, not a local law-enforcement issue." Interim police chief Bayan Lewis told the L.A. Police Commission: "It is not the time. It is not the day to look at Special Order 40."
Nor will it ever be, as long as immigration numbers continue to grow. After their brief moment of truth in 1996, Los Angeles politicians have only grown more adamant in defense of Special Order 40. After learning that cops in the scandal-plagued Rampart Division had cooperated with the INS to try to uproot murderous gang members from the community, local politicians threw a fit, criticizing district commanders for even allowing INS agents into their station houses. In turn, the LAPD strictly disciplined the offending officers. By now, big-city police chiefs are unfortunately just as determined to defend sanctuary policies as the politicians who appoint them; not so the rank and file, however, who see daily the benefit that an immigration tool would bring.
Immigration politics have similarly harmed New York. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city's sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. The INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to "terrorize people." Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later, several visa-overstayers participated in the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history.
New York conveniently forgot the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary laws until a gang of five Mexicans—four of them illegal—abducted and brutally raped a 42-year-old mother of two near some railroad tracks in Queens. The NYPD had already arrested three of the illegal aliens numerous times for such crimes as assault, attempted robbery, criminal trespass, illegal gun possession, and drug offenses. The department had never notified the INS.
Citizen outrage forced Mayor Michael Bloomberg to revisit the city's sanctuary decree yet again. In May 2003, Bloomberg tweaked the policy minimally to allow city staffers to inquire into immigration status only if it is relevant to the awarding of a government benefit. Though Bloomberg's new rule said nothing about reporting immigration violations to federal officials, advocates immediately claimed that it did allow such reporting, and the ethnic lobbies went ballistic. "What we're seeing is the erosion of people's rights," thundered Angelo Falcon of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. After three months of intense agitation by immigrant groups, Bloomberg replaced this innocuous "don't ask" policy with a "don't tell" rule even broader than Gotham's original sanctuary policy. The new rule prohibits city employees from giving other government officials information not just about immigration status but about tax payments, sexual orientation, welfare status, and other matters.
But even were immigrant-saturated cities to discard their sanctuary policies and start enforcing immigration violations where public safety demands it, the resource-starved immigration authorities couldn't handle the overwhelming additional workload.
The chronic shortage of manpower to oversee, and detention space to house, aliens as they await their deportation hearings (or, following an order of removal from a federal judge, their actual deportation) has forced immigration officials to practice a constant triage. Long ago, the feds stopped trying to find and deport aliens who had "merely" entered the country illegally through stealth or fraudulent documents. Currently, the only types of illegal aliens who run any risk of catching federal attention are those who have been convicted of an "aggravated felony" (a particularly egregious crime) or who have been deported following conviction for an aggravated felony and who have reentered (an offense punishable with 20 years in jail).
That triage has been going on for a long time, as former INS investigator Mike Cutler, who worked with the NYPD catching Brooklyn drug dealers in the 1970s, explains. "If you arrested someone you wanted to detain, you'd go to your boss and start a bidding war," Cutler recalls. "You'd say: 'My guy ran three blocks, threw a couple of punches, and had six pieces of ID.' The boss would turn to another agent: 'Next! Whaddid your guy do?' 'He ran 18 blocks, pushed over an old lady, and had a gun.' " But such one-upmanship was usually fruitless. "Without the jail space," explains Cutler, "it was like the Fish and Wildlife Service; you'd tag their ear and let them go."
But even when immigration officials actually arrest someone, and even if a judge issues a final deportation order (usually after years of litigation and appeals), they rarely have the manpower to put the alien on a bus or plane and take him across the border. Second alternative: detain him pending removal. Again, inadequate space and staff. In the early 1990s, for example, 15 INS officers were in charge of the deportation of approximately 85,000 aliens (not all of them criminals) in New York City. The agency's actual response to final orders of removal was what is known as a "run letter"—a notice asking the deportable alien kindly to show up in a month or two to be deported, when the agency might be able to process him. Results: in 2001, 87 percent of deportable aliens who received run letters disappeared, a number that was even higher—94 percent—if they were from terror-sponsoring countries.
To other law-enforcement agencies, the feds' triage often looks like complete indifference to immigration violations. Testifying to Congress about the Queens rape by illegal Mexicans, New York's criminal justice coordinator defended the city's failure to notify the INS after the rapists' previous arrests on the ground that the agency wouldn't have responded anyway. "We have time and time again been unable to reach INS on the phone," John Feinblatt said last February. "When we reach them on the phone, they require that we write a letter. When we write a letter, they require that it be by a superior."
Criminal aliens also interpret the triage as indifference. John Mullaly a former NYPD homicide detective, estimates that 70 percent of the drug dealers and other criminals in Manhattan's Washington Heights were illegal. Were Mullaly to threaten an illegal-alien thug in custody that his next stop would be El Salvador unless he cooperated, the criminal would just laugh, knowing that the INS would never show up. The message could not be clearer: this is a culture that can't enforce its most basic law of entry. If policing's broken-windows theory is correct, the failure to enforce one set of rules breeds overall contempt for the law.
The sheer number of criminal aliens overwhelmed an innovative program that would allow immigration officials to complete deportation hearings while a criminal was still in state or federal prison, so that upon his release he could be immediately ejected without taking up precious INS detention space. But the process, begun in 1988, immediately bogged down due to the numbers—in 2000, for example, nearly 30 percent of federal prisoners were foreign-born. The agency couldn't find enough pro bono attorneys to represent such an army of criminal aliens (who have extensive due-process rights in contesting deportation) and so would have to request delay after delay. Or enough immigration judges would not be available. In 1997, the INS simply had no record of a whopping 36 percent of foreign-born inmates who had been released from federal and four state prisons without any review of their deportability. They included 1,198 aggravated felons, 80 of whom were soon re-arrested for new crimes.
Resource starvation is not the only reason for federal inaction. The INS was a creature of immigration politics, and INS district directors came under great pressure from local politicians to divert scarce resources into distribution of such "benefits" as permanent residency, citizenship, and work permits, and away from criminal or other investigations. In the late 1980s, for example, the INS refused to join an FBI task force against Haitian drug trafficking in Miami, fearing criticism for "Haitian-bashing." In 1997, after Hispanic activists protested a much-publicized raid that netted nearly two dozen illegals, the Border Patrol said that it would no longer join Simi Valley, California, probation officers on home searches of illegal-alien-dominated gangs.
The disastrous Citizenship USA project of 1996 was a luminous case of politics driving the INS to sacrifice enforcement to "benefits." When, in the early 1990s, the prospect of welfare reform drove immigrants to apply for citizenship in record numbers to preserve their welfare eligibility, the Clinton administration, seeing a political bonanza in hundreds of thousands of new welfare-dependent citizens, ordered the naturalization process radically expedited. Thanks to relentless administration pressure, processing errors in 1996 were 99 percent in New York and 90 percent in Los Angeles, and tens of thousands of aliens with criminal records, including for murder and armed robbery, were naturalized.
Another powerful political force, the immigration bar association, has won from Congress an elaborate set of due-process rights for criminal aliens that can keep them in the country indefinitely. Federal probation officers in Brooklyn are supervising two illegals—a Jordanian and an Egyptian with Saudi citizenship—who look "ready to blow up the Statue of Liberty," according to a probation official, but the officers can't get rid of them. The Jordanian had been caught fencing stolen Social Security and tax-refund checks; now he sells phone cards, which he uses himself to make untraceable calls. The Saudi's offense: using a fraudulent Social Security number to get employment—a puzzlingly unnecessary scam, since he receives large sums from the Middle East, including from millionaire relatives. But intelligence links him to terrorism, so presumably he worked in order not to draw attention to himself. Currently, he changes his cell phone every month. Ordinarily such a minor offense would not be prosecuted, but the government, fearing that he had terrorist intentions, used whatever it had to put him in prison.
Now, probation officers desperately want to see the duo out of the country, but the two ex-cons have hired lawyers, who are relentlessly fighting their deportation. "Due process allows you to stay for years without an adjudication," says a probation officer in frustration. "A regular immigration attorney can keep you in the country for three years, a high-priced one for ten." In the meantime, Brooklyn probation officials are watching the bridges.
Even where immigration officials successfully nab and deport criminal aliens, the reality, says a former federal gang prosecutor, is that "they all come back. They can't make it in Mexico." The tens of thousands of illegal farmworkers and dishwashers who overpower U.S. border controls every year carry in their wake thousands of brutal assailants and terrorists who use the same smuggling industry and who benefit from the same irresistible odds: there are so many more of them than the Border Patrol.
For, of course, the government's inability to keep out criminal aliens is part and parcel of its inability to patrol the border, period. For decades, the INS had as much effect on the migration of millions of illegals as a can tied to the tail of a tiger. And the immigrants themselves, despite the press cliché of hapless aliens living fearfully in the shadows, seemed to regard immigration authorities with all the concern of an elephant for a flea.
Certainly fear of immigration officers is not in evidence among the hundreds of illegal day laborers who hang out on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, New York, in front of money wire services, travel agencies, immigration-attorney offices, and phone arcades, all catering to the local Hispanic population (as well as to drug dealers and terrorists). "There is no chance of getting caught," cheerfully explains Rafael, an Ecuadoran. Like the dozen Ecuadorans and Mexicans on his particular corner, Rafael is hoping that an SUV seeking carpenters for $100 a day will show up soon. "We don't worry, because we're not doing anything wrong. I know it's illegal; I need the papers, but here, nobody asks you for papers."
Even the newly fortified Mexican border, the one spot where the government really tries to prevent illegal immigration, looms as only a minor inconvenience to the day laborers. The odds, they realize, are overwhelmingly in their favor. Miguel, a reserved young carpenter, crossed the border at Tijuana three years ago with 15 others. Border Patrol spotted them, but with six officers to 16 illegals, only five got caught. In illegal border crossings, you get what you pay for, Miguel says. If you try to shave on the fee, the coyotes will abandon you at the first problem. Miguel's wife was flying into New York from Los Angeles that very day; it had cost him $2,200 to get her across the border. "Because I pay, I don't worry," he says complacently.
The only way to dampen illegal immigration and its attendant train of criminals and terrorists—short of an economic revolution in the sending countries or an impregnably militarized border—is to remove the jobs magnet. As long as migrants know they can easily get work, they will find ways to evade border controls. But enforcing laws against illegal labor is among government's lowest priorities. In 2001, only 124 agents nationwide were trying to find and prosecute the hundreds of thousands of employers and millions of illegal aliens who violate the employment laws, the Associated Press reports.
Even were immigration officials to devote adequate resources to worksite investigations, not much would change, because their legal weapons are so weak. That's no accident: though it is a crime to hire illegal aliens, a coalition of libertarians, business lobbies, and left-wing advocates has consistently blocked the fraud-proof form of work authorization necessary to enforce that ban. Libertarians have erupted in hysteria at such proposals as a toll-free number to the Social Security Administration for employers to confirm Social Security numbers. Hispanics warn just as stridently that helping employers verify work eligibility would result in discrimination against Hispanics—implicitly conceding that vast numbers of Hispanics work illegally.
The result: hiring practices in illegal-immigrant-saturated industries are a charade. Millions of illegal workers pretend to present valid documents, and thousands of employers pretend to believe them. The law doesn't require the employer to verify that a worker is actually qualified to work, and as long as the proffered documents are not patently phony—scrawled with red crayon on a matchbook, say—the employer will nearly always be exempt from liability merely by having eyeballed them. To find an employer guilty of violating the ban on hiring illegal aliens, immigration authorities must prove that he knew he was getting fake papers—an almost insurmountable burden. Meanwhile, the market for counterfeit documents has exploded: in one month alone in 1998, immigration authorities seized nearly 2 million of them in Los Angeles, destined for immigrant workers, welfare seekers, criminals, and terrorists.
For illegal workers and employers, there is no downside to the employment charade. If immigration officials ever do try to conduct an industry-wide investigation—which will at least net the illegal employees, if not the employers—local congressmen will almost certainly head it off. An INS inquiry into the Vidalia-onion industry in Georgia was not only aborted by Georgia's congressional delegation; it actually resulted in a local amnesty for the growers' illegal workforce. The downside to complying with the spirit of the employment law, on the other hand, is considerable. Ethnic advocacy groups are ready to picket employers who dismiss illegal workers, and employers understandably fear being undercut by less scrupulous competitors.
Of the incalculable changes in American politics, demographics, and culture that the continuing surge of migrants is causing, one of the most profound is the breakdown of the distinction between legal and illegal entry. Everywhere, illegal aliens receive free public education and free medical care at taxpayer expense; 13 states offer them driver's licenses. States everywhere have been pushed to grant illegal aliens college scholarships and reduced in-state tuition. One hundred banks, over 800 law-enforcement agencies, and dozens of cities accept an identification card created by Mexico to credentialize illegal Mexican aliens in the U.S. The Bush administration has given its blessing to this matricula consular card, over the strong protest of the FBI, which warns that the gaping security loopholes that the card creates make it a boon to money launderers, immigrant smugglers, and terrorists. Border authorities have already caught an Iranian man sneaking across the border this year, Mexican matricula card in hand.
Hispanic advocates have helped blur the distinction between a legal and an illegal resident by asserting that differentiating the two is an act of irrational bigotry. Arrests of illegal aliens inside the border now inevitably spark protests, often led by the Mexican government, that feature signs calling for "no más racismo." Immigrant advocates use the language of "human rights" to appeal to an authority higher than such trivia as citizenship laws. They attack the term "amnesty" for implicitly acknowledging the validity of borders. Indeed, grouses Illinois congressman Luis Gutierrez, "There's an implication that somehow you did something wrong and you need to be forgiven."
Illegal aliens and their advocates speak loudly about what they think the U.S. owes them, not vice versa. "I believe they have a right . . . to work, to drive their kids to school," said California assemblywoman Sarah Reyes. An immigration agent says that people he stops "get in your face about their rights, because our failure to enforce the law emboldens them." Taking this idea to its extreme, Joaquín Avila, a UCLA Chicano studies professor and law lecturer, argues that to deny non-citizens the vote, especially in the many California cities where they constitute the majority, is a form of apartheid.
Yet no poll has ever shown that Americans want more open borders. Quite the reverse. By a huge majority—at least 60 percent—they want to rein in immigration, and they endorse an observation that Senator Alan Simpson made 20 years ago: Americans "are fed up with efforts to make them feel that [they] do not have that fundamental right of any people—to decide who will join them and help form the future country in which they and their posterity will live." But if the elites' and the advocates' idea of giving voting rights to non-citizen majorities catches on—and don't be surprised if it does—Americans could be faced with the ultimate absurdity of people outside the social compact making rules for those inside it.
However the nation ultimately decides to rationalize its chaotic and incoherent immigration system, surely all can agree that, at a minimum, authorities should expel illegal-alien criminals swiftly. Even on the grounds of protecting non-criminal illegal immigrants, we should start by junking sanctuary policies. By stripping cops of what may be their only immediate tool to remove felons from the community, these policies leave law-abiding immigrants prey to crime.
But the non-enforcement of immigration laws in general has an even more destructive effect. In many immigrant communities, assimilation into gangs seems to be outstripping assimilation into civic culture. Toddlers are learning to flash gang signals and hate the police, reports the Los Angeles Times. In New York City, "every high school has its Mexican gang," and most 12- to 14-year-olds have already joined, claims Ernesto Vega, an illegal 18-year-old Mexican. Such pathologies only worsen when the first lesson that immigrants learn about U.S. law is that Americans don't bother to enforce it. "Institutionalizing illegal immigration creates a mindset in people that anything goes in the U.S.," observes Patrick Ortega, the news and public-affairs director of Radio Nueva Vida in southern California. "It creates a new subculture, with a sequela of social ills." It is broken windows writ large.
For the sake of immigrants and native-born Americans alike, it's time to decide what our immigration policy is—and enforce it.
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The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave
Heather Mac Donald Why can't our immigration authorities deport the hordes of illegal felons in our cities?
Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens. Yet in cities where the crime these aliens commit is highest, the police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of members of a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have sneaked back into town after having been deported for such crimes as murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and drug trafficking. Police officers know who they are and know that their mere presence in the country is a felony. Yet should a cop arrest an illegal gangbanger for felonious reentry, it is he who will be treated as a criminal, for violating the LAPD's rule against enforcing immigration law.
The LAPD's ban on immigration enforcement mirrors bans in immigrant-saturated cities around the country, from New York and Chicago to San Diego, Austin, and Houston. These "sanctuary policies" generally prohibit city employees, including the cops, from reporting immigration violations to federal authorities.
Such laws testify to the sheer political power of immigrant lobbies, a power so irresistible that police officials shrink from even mentioning the illegal-alien crime wave. "We can't even talk about it," says a frustrated LAPD captain. "People are afraid of a backlash from Hispanics." Another LAPD commander in a predominantly Hispanic, gang-infested district sighs: "I would get a firestorm of criticism if I talked about [enforcing the immigration law against illegals]." Neither captain would speak for attribution.
But however pernicious in themselves, sanctuary rules are a symptom of a much broader disease: the nation's near-total loss of control over immigration policy. Fifty years ago, immigration policy might have driven immigration numbers, but today the numbers drive policy. The nonstop increase of immigration is reshaping the language and the law to dissolve any distinction between legal and illegal aliens and, ultimately, the very idea of national borders.
It is a measure of how topsy-turvy the immigration environment has become that to ask police officials about the illegal-alien crime problem feels like a gross faux pas, not done in polite company. And a police official asked to violate this powerful taboo will give a strangled response—or, as in the case of a New York deputy commissioner, break off communication altogether. Meanwhile, millions of illegal aliens work, shop, travel, and commit crimes in plain view, utterly secure in their de facto immunity from the immigration law.
I asked the Miami Police Department's spokesman, Detective Delrish Moss, about his employer's policy on lawbreaking illegals. In September, the force arrested a Honduran visa violator for seven vicious rapes. The previous year, Miami cops had had the suspect in custody for lewd and lascivious molestation, without checking his immigration status. Had they done so, they would have discovered his visa overstay, a deportable offense, and so could have forestalled the rapes. "We have shied away from unnecessary involvement dealing with immigration issues," explains Moss, choosing his words carefully, "because of our large immigrant population."
Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the illegal-alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is startling. Some examples:
• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.
• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.
• The leadership of the Columbia Lil' Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.'s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.
Good luck finding any reference to such facts in official crime analysis. The LAPD and the L.A. city attorney recently requested an injunction against drug trafficking in Hollywood, targeting the 18th Street Gang and the "non–gang members" who sell drugs in Hollywood for the gang. Those non–gang members are virtually all illegal Mexicans, smuggled into the country by a ring organized by 18th Street bigs. The Mexicans pay off their transportation debts to the gang by selling drugs; many soon realize how lucrative that line of work is and stay in the business.
Cops and prosecutors universally know the immigration status of these non-gang "Hollywood dealers," as the city attorney calls them, but the gang injunction is assiduously silent on the matter. And if a Hollywood officer were to arrest an illegal dealer (known on the street as a "border brother") for his immigration status, or even notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service (since early 2003, absorbed into the new Department of Homeland Security), he would face severe discipline for violating Special Order 40, the city's sanctuary policy.
The ordinarily tough-as-nails former LAPD chief Daryl Gates enacted Special Order 40 in 1979—showing that even the most unapologetic law-and-order cop is no match for immigration advocates. The order prohibits officers from "initiating police action where the objective is to discover the alien status of a person"—in other words, the police may not even ask someone they have arrested about his immigration status until after they have filed criminal charges, nor may they arrest someone for immigration violations. They may not notify immigration authorities about an illegal alien picked up for minor violations. Only if they have already booked an illegal alien for a felony or for multiple misdemeanors may they inquire into his status or report him. The bottom line: a cordon sanitaire between local law enforcement and immigration authorities that creates a safe haven for illegal criminals.
L.A.'s sanctuary law and all others like it contradict a key 1990s policing discovery: the Great Chain of Being in criminal behavior. Pick up a law-violator for a "minor" crime, and you might well prevent a major crime: enforcing graffiti and turnstile-jumping laws nabs you murderers and robbers. Enforcing known immigration violations, such as reentry following deportation, against known felons, would be even more productive. LAPD officers recognize illegal deported gang members all the time—flashing gang signs at court hearings for rival gangbangers, hanging out on the corner, or casing a target. These illegal returnees are, simply by being in the country after deportation, committing a felony (in contrast to garden-variety illegals on their first trip to the U.S., say, who are only committing a misdemeanor). "But if I see a deportee from the Mara Salvatrucha [Salvadoran prison] gang crossing the street, I know I can't touch him," laments a Los Angeles gang officer. Only if the deported felon has given the officer some other reason to stop him, such as an observed narcotics sale, can the cop accost him—but not for the immigration felony.
Though such a policy puts the community at risk, the department's top brass brush off such concerns. No big deal if you see deported gangbangers back on the streets, they say. Just put them under surveillance for "real" crimes and arrest them for those. But surveillance is very manpower-intensive. Where there is an immediate ground for getting a violent felon off the street and for questioning him further, it is absurd to demand that the woefully understaffed LAPD ignore it.
The stated reasons for sanctuary policies are that they encourage illegal-alien crime victims and witnesses to cooperate with cops without fear of deportation, and that they encourage illegals to take advantage of city services like health care and education (to whose maintenance few illegals have contributed a single tax dollar, of course). There has never been any empirical verification that sanctuary laws actually accomplish these goals—and no one has ever suggested not enforcing drug laws, say, for fear of intimidating drug-using crime victims. But in any case, this official rationale could be honored by limiting police use of immigration laws to some subset of immigration violators: deported felons, say, or repeat criminal offenders whose immigration status police already know.
The real reason cities prohibit their cops and other employees from immigration reporting and enforcement is, like nearly everything else in immigration policy, the numbers. The immigrant population has grown so large that public officials are terrified of alienating it, even at the expense of ignoring the law and tolerating violence. In 1996, a breathtaking Los Angeles Times exposé on the 18th Street Gang, which included descriptions of innocent bystanders being murdered by laughing cholos (gang members), revealed the rate of illegal-alien membership in the gang. In response to the public outcry, the Los Angeles City Council ordered the police to reexamine Special Order 40. You would have thought it had suggested reconsidering Roe v. Wade. A police commander warned the council: "This is going to open a significant, heated debate." City Councilwoman Laura Chick put on a brave front: "We mustn't be afraid," she declared firmly.
But of course immigrant pandering trumped public safety. Law-abiding residents of gang-infested neighborhoods may live in terror of the tattooed gangbangers dealing drugs, spraying graffiti, and shooting up rivals outside their homes, but such anxiety can never equal a politician's fear of offending Hispanics. At the start of the reexamination process, LAPD deputy chief John White had argued that allowing the department to work closely with the INS would give cops another tool for getting gang members off the streets. Trying to build a homicide case, say, against an illegal gang member is often futile, he explained, since witnesses fear deadly retaliation if they cooperate with the police. Enforcing an immigration violation would allow the cops to lock up the murderer right now, without putting a witness's life at risk.
But six months later, Deputy Chief White had changed his tune: "Any broadening of the policy gets us into the immigration business," he asserted. "It's a federal law-enforcement issue, not a local law-enforcement issue." Interim police chief Bayan Lewis told the L.A. Police Commission: "It is not the time. It is not the day to look at Special Order 40."
Nor will it ever be, as long as immigration numbers continue to grow. After their brief moment of truth in 1996, Los Angeles politicians have only grown more adamant in defense of Special Order 40. After learning that cops in the scandal-plagued Rampart Division had cooperated with the INS to try to uproot murderous gang members from the community, local politicians threw a fit, criticizing district commanders for even allowing INS agents into their station houses. In turn, the LAPD strictly disciplined the offending officers. By now, big-city police chiefs are unfortunately just as determined to defend sanctuary policies as the politicians who appoint them; not so the rank and file, however, who see daily the benefit that an immigration tool would bring.
Immigration politics have similarly harmed New York. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city's sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. The INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to "terrorize people." Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later, several visa-overstayers participated in the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history.
New York conveniently forgot the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary laws until a gang of five Mexicans—four of them illegal—abducted and brutally raped a 42-year-old mother of two near some railroad tracks in Queens. The NYPD had already arrested three of the illegal aliens numerous times for such crimes as assault, attempted robbery, criminal trespass, illegal gun possession, and drug offenses. The department had never notified the INS.
Citizen outrage forced Mayor Michael Bloomberg to revisit the city's sanctuary decree yet again. In May 2003, Bloomberg tweaked the policy minimally to allow city staffers to inquire into immigration status only if it is relevant to the awarding of a government benefit. Though Bloomberg's new rule said nothing about reporting immigration violations to federal officials, advocates immediately claimed that it did allow such reporting, and the ethnic lobbies went ballistic. "What we're seeing is the erosion of people's rights," thundered Angelo Falcon of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. After three months of intense agitation by immigrant groups, Bloomberg replaced this innocuous "don't ask" policy with a "don't tell" rule even broader than Gotham's original sanctuary policy. The new rule prohibits city employees from giving other government officials information not just about immigration status but about tax payments, sexual orientation, welfare status, and other matters.
But even were immigrant-saturated cities to discard their sanctuary policies and start enforcing immigration violations where public safety demands it, the resource-starved immigration authorities couldn't handle the overwhelming additional workload.
The chronic shortage of manpower to oversee, and detention space to house, aliens as they await their deportation hearings (or, following an order of removal from a federal judge, their actual deportation) has forced immigration officials to practice a constant triage. Long ago, the feds stopped trying to find and deport aliens who had "merely" entered the country illegally through stealth or fraudulent documents. Currently, the only types of illegal aliens who run any risk of catching federal attention are those who have been convicted of an "aggravated felony" (a particularly egregious crime) or who have been deported following conviction for an aggravated felony and who have reentered (an offense punishable with 20 years in jail).
That triage has been going on for a long time, as former INS investigator Mike Cutler, who worked with the NYPD catching Brooklyn drug dealers in the 1970s, explains. "If you arrested someone you wanted to detain, you'd go to your boss and start a bidding war," Cutler recalls. "You'd say: 'My guy ran three blocks, threw a couple of punches, and had six pieces of ID.' The boss would turn to another agent: 'Next! Whaddid your guy do?' 'He ran 18 blocks, pushed over an old lady, and had a gun.' " But such one-upmanship was usually fruitless. "Without the jail space," explains Cutler, "it was like the Fish and Wildlife Service; you'd tag their ear and let them go."
But even when immigration officials actually arrest someone, and even if a judge issues a final deportation order (usually after years of litigation and appeals), they rarely have the manpower to put the alien on a bus or plane and take him across the border. Second alternative: detain him pending removal. Again, inadequate space and staff. In the early 1990s, for example, 15 INS officers were in charge of the deportation of approximately 85,000 aliens (not all of them criminals) in New York City. The agency's actual response to final orders of removal was what is known as a "run letter"—a notice asking the deportable alien kindly to show up in a month or two to be deported, when the agency might be able to process him. Results: in 2001, 87 percent of deportable aliens who received run letters disappeared, a number that was even higher—94 percent—if they were from terror-sponsoring countries.
To other law-enforcement agencies, the feds' triage often looks like complete indifference to immigration violations. Testifying to Congress about the Queens rape by illegal Mexicans, New York's criminal justice coordinator defended the city's failure to notify the INS after the rapists' previous arrests on the ground that the agency wouldn't have responded anyway. "We have time and time again been unable to reach INS on the phone," John Feinblatt said last February. "When we reach them on the phone, they require that we write a letter. When we write a letter, they require that it be by a superior."
Criminal aliens also interpret the triage as indifference. John Mullaly a former NYPD homicide detective, estimates that 70 percent of the drug dealers and other criminals in Manhattan's Washington Heights were illegal. Were Mullaly to threaten an illegal-alien thug in custody that his next stop would be El Salvador unless he cooperated, the criminal would just laugh, knowing that the INS would never show up. The message could not be clearer: this is a culture that can't enforce its most basic law of entry. If policing's broken-windows theory is correct, the failure to enforce one set of rules breeds overall contempt for the law.
The sheer number of criminal aliens overwhelmed an innovative program that would allow immigration officials to complete deportation hearings while a criminal was still in state or federal prison, so that upon his release he could be immediately ejected without taking up precious INS detention space. But the process, begun in 1988, immediately bogged down due to the numbers—in 2000, for example, nearly 30 percent of federal prisoners were foreign-born. The agency couldn't find enough pro bono attorneys to represent such an army of criminal aliens (who have extensive due-process rights in contesting deportation) and so would have to request delay after delay. Or enough immigration judges would not be available. In 1997, the INS simply had no record of a whopping 36 percent of foreign-born inmates who had been released from federal and four state prisons without any review of their deportability. They included 1,198 aggravated felons, 80 of whom were soon re-arrested for new crimes.
Resource starvation is not the only reason for federal inaction. The INS was a creature of immigration politics, and INS district directors came under great pressure from local politicians to divert scarce resources into distribution of such "benefits" as permanent residency, citizenship, and work permits, and away from criminal or other investigations. In the late 1980s, for example, the INS refused to join an FBI task force against Haitian drug trafficking in Miami, fearing criticism for "Haitian-bashing." In 1997, after Hispanic activists protested a much-publicized raid that netted nearly two dozen illegals, the Border Patrol said that it would no longer join Simi Valley, California, probation officers on home searches of illegal-alien-dominated gangs.
The disastrous Citizenship USA project of 1996 was a luminous case of politics driving the INS to sacrifice enforcement to "benefits." When, in the early 1990s, the prospect of welfare reform drove immigrants to apply for citizenship in record numbers to preserve their welfare eligibility, the Clinton administration, seeing a political bonanza in hundreds of thousands of new welfare-dependent citizens, ordered the naturalization process radically expedited. Thanks to relentless administration pressure, processing errors in 1996 were 99 percent in New York and 90 percent in Los Angeles, and tens of thousands of aliens with criminal records, including for murder and armed robbery, were naturalized.
Another powerful political force, the immigration bar association, has won from Congress an elaborate set of due-process rights for criminal aliens that can keep them in the country indefinitely. Federal probation officers in Brooklyn are supervising two illegals—a Jordanian and an Egyptian with Saudi citizenship—who look "ready to blow up the Statue of Liberty," according to a probation official, but the officers can't get rid of them. The Jordanian had been caught fencing stolen Social Security and tax-refund checks; now he sells phone cards, which he uses himself to make untraceable calls. The Saudi's offense: using a fraudulent Social Security number to get employment—a puzzlingly unnecessary scam, since he receives large sums from the Middle East, including from millionaire relatives. But intelligence links him to terrorism, so presumably he worked in order not to draw attention to himself. Currently, he changes his cell phone every month. Ordinarily such a minor offense would not be prosecuted, but the government, fearing that he had terrorist intentions, used whatever it had to put him in prison.
Now, probation officers desperately want to see the duo out of the country, but the two ex-cons have hired lawyers, who are relentlessly fighting their deportation. "Due process allows you to stay for years without an adjudication," says a probation officer in frustration. "A regular immigration attorney can keep you in the country for three years, a high-priced one for ten." In the meantime, Brooklyn probation officials are watching the bridges.
Even where immigration officials successfully nab and deport criminal aliens, the reality, says a former federal gang prosecutor, is that "they all come back. They can't make it in Mexico." The tens of thousands of illegal farmworkers and dishwashers who overpower U.S. border controls every year carry in their wake thousands of brutal assailants and terrorists who use the same smuggling industry and who benefit from the same irresistible odds: there are so many more of them than the Border Patrol.
For, of course, the government's inability to keep out criminal aliens is part and parcel of its inability to patrol the border, period. For decades, the INS had as much effect on the migration of millions of illegals as a can tied to the tail of a tiger. And the immigrants themselves, despite the press cliché of hapless aliens living fearfully in the shadows, seemed to regard immigration authorities with all the concern of an elephant for a flea.
Certainly fear of immigration officers is not in evidence among the hundreds of illegal day laborers who hang out on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, New York, in front of money wire services, travel agencies, immigration-attorney offices, and phone arcades, all catering to the local Hispanic population (as well as to drug dealers and terrorists). "There is no chance of getting caught," cheerfully explains Rafael, an Ecuadoran. Like the dozen Ecuadorans and Mexicans on his particular corner, Rafael is hoping that an SUV seeking carpenters for $100 a day will show up soon. "We don't worry, because we're not doing anything wrong. I know it's illegal; I need the papers, but here, nobody asks you for papers."
Even the newly fortified Mexican border, the one spot where the government really tries to prevent illegal immigration, looms as only a minor inconvenience to the day laborers. The odds, they realize, are overwhelmingly in their favor. Miguel, a reserved young carpenter, crossed the border at Tijuana three years ago with 15 others. Border Patrol spotted them, but with six officers to 16 illegals, only five got caught. In illegal border crossings, you get what you pay for, Miguel says. If you try to shave on the fee, the coyotes will abandon you at the first problem. Miguel's wife was flying into New York from Los Angeles that very day; it had cost him $2,200 to get her across the border. "Because I pay, I don't worry," he says complacently.
The only way to dampen illegal immigration and its attendant train of criminals and terrorists—short of an economic revolution in the sending countries or an impregnably militarized border—is to remove the jobs magnet. As long as migrants know they can easily get work, they will find ways to evade border controls. But enforcing laws against illegal labor is among government's lowest priorities. In 2001, only 124 agents nationwide were trying to find and prosecute the hundreds of thousands of employers and millions of illegal aliens who violate the employment laws, the Associated Press reports.
Even were immigration officials to devote adequate resources to worksite investigations, not much would change, because their legal weapons are so weak. That's no accident: though it is a crime to hire illegal aliens, a coalition of libertarians, business lobbies, and left-wing advocates has consistently blocked the fraud-proof form of work authorization necessary to enforce that ban. Libertarians have erupted in hysteria at such proposals as a toll-free number to the Social Security Administration for employers to confirm Social Security numbers. Hispanics warn just as stridently that helping employers verify work eligibility would result in discrimination against Hispanics—implicitly conceding that vast numbers of Hispanics work illegally.
The result: hiring practices in illegal-immigrant-saturated industries are a charade. Millions of illegal workers pretend to present valid documents, and thousands of employers pretend to believe them. The law doesn't require the employer to verify that a worker is actually qualified to work, and as long as the proffered documents are not patently phony—scrawled with red crayon on a matchbook, say—the employer will nearly always be exempt from liability merely by having eyeballed them. To find an employer guilty of violating the ban on hiring illegal aliens, immigration authorities must prove that he knew he was getting fake papers—an almost insurmountable burden. Meanwhile, the market for counterfeit documents has exploded: in one month alone in 1998, immigration authorities seized nearly 2 million of them in Los Angeles, destined for immigrant workers, welfare seekers, criminals, and terrorists.
For illegal workers and employers, there is no downside to the employment charade. If immigration officials ever do try to conduct an industry-wide investigation—which will at least net the illegal employees, if not the employers—local congressmen will almost certainly head it off. An INS inquiry into the Vidalia-onion industry in Georgia was not only aborted by Georgia's congressional delegation; it actually resulted in a local amnesty for the growers' illegal workforce. The downside to complying with the spirit of the employment law, on the other hand, is considerable. Ethnic advocacy groups are ready to picket employers who dismiss illegal workers, and employers understandably fear being undercut by less scrupulous competitors.
Of the incalculable changes in American politics, demographics, and culture that the continuing surge of migrants is causing, one of the most profound is the breakdown of the distinction between legal and illegal entry. Everywhere, illegal aliens receive free public education and free medical care at taxpayer expense; 13 states offer them driver's licenses. States everywhere have been pushed to grant illegal aliens college scholarships and reduced in-state tuition. One hundred banks, over 800 law-enforcement agencies, and dozens of cities accept an identification card created by Mexico to credentialize illegal Mexican aliens in the U.S. The Bush administration has given its blessing to this matricula consular card, over the strong protest of the FBI, which warns that the gaping security loopholes that the card creates make it a boon to money launderers, immigrant smugglers, and terrorists. Border authorities have already caught an Iranian man sneaking across the border this year, Mexican matricula card in hand.
Hispanic advocates have helped blur the distinction between a legal and an illegal resident by asserting that differentiating the two is an act of irrational bigotry. Arrests of illegal aliens inside the border now inevitably spark protests, often led by the Mexican government, that feature signs calling for "no más racismo." Immigrant advocates use the language of "human rights" to appeal to an authority higher than such trivia as citizenship laws. They attack the term "amnesty" for implicitly acknowledging the validity of borders. Indeed, grouses Illinois congressman Luis Gutierrez, "There's an implication that somehow you did something wrong and you need to be forgiven."
Illegal aliens and their advocates speak loudly about what they think the U.S. owes them, not vice versa. "I believe they have a right . . . to work, to drive their kids to school," said California assemblywoman Sarah Reyes. An immigration agent says that people he stops "get in your face about their rights, because our failure to enforce the law emboldens them." Taking this idea to its extreme, Joaquín Avila, a UCLA Chicano studies professor and law lecturer, argues that to deny non-citizens the vote, especially in the many California cities where they constitute the majority, is a form of apartheid.
Yet no poll has ever shown that Americans want more open borders. Quite the reverse. By a huge majority—at least 60 percent—they want to rein in immigration, and they endorse an observation that Senator Alan Simpson made 20 years ago: Americans "are fed up with efforts to make them feel that [they] do not have that fundamental right of any people—to decide who will join them and help form the future country in which they and their posterity will live." But if the elites' and the advocates' idea of giving voting rights to non-citizen majorities catches on—and don't be surprised if it does—Americans could be faced with the ultimate absurdity of people outside the social compact making rules for those inside it.
However the nation ultimately decides to rationalize its chaotic and incoherent immigration system, surely all can agree that, at a minimum, authorities should expel illegal-alien criminals swiftly. Even on the grounds of protecting non-criminal illegal immigrants, we should start by junking sanctuary policies. By stripping cops of what may be their only immediate tool to remove felons from the community, these policies leave law-abiding immigrants prey to crime.
But the non-enforcement of immigration laws in general has an even more destructive effect. In many immigrant communities, assimilation into gangs seems to be outstripping assimilation into civic culture. Toddlers are learning to flash gang signals and hate the police, reports the Los Angeles Times. In New York City, "every high school has its Mexican gang," and most 12- to 14-year-olds have already joined, claims Ernesto Vega, an illegal 18-year-old Mexican. Such pathologies only worsen when the first lesson that immigrants learn about U.S. law is that Americans don't bother to enforce it. "Institutionalizing illegal immigration creates a mindset in people that anything goes in the U.S.," observes Patrick Ortega, the news and public-affairs director of Radio Nueva Vida in southern California. "It creates a new subculture, with a sequela of social ills." It is broken windows writ large.
For the sake of immigrants and native-born Americans alike, it's time to decide what our immigration policy is—and enforce it.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_illegal_a
lien.html
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/09/The_IllegalAlien_Crime_Waveaddcomment
Busted immigration policies cost L.A. dearly...
Busted immigration policies cost L.A. dearly...
Busted immigration policies cost L.A. dearly Article Last Updated: 01/09/2008 07:35:33 PM PST
As Los Angeles struggles with revenue shortfalls and cuts from Sacramento, keep the following figure in mind: $444 million.
That, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, is how much illegal immigration costs L.A. County in welfare and food stamps per year. Nearly half a billion dollars.
Immigration may be Washington's problem, but L.A. is bearing the cost.
The federal government's refusal to implement reform that allows for sensible immigration for hard-working and self-sufficient people perpetuates the current broken system - under which anyone can come in, without accountability or regulation.
What's more, when people work "invisibly" in the black market, there is no way to trace their income. Families that shouldn't qualify for benefits, do. And undocumented workers largely don't pay income taxes.
Unfortunately, immigration is a federal issue. It is Washington that fails to rationalize the process under which foreign nationals enter the country. And it is Washington that has proved woefully inept at securing the borders.
But Washington - even with a Californian as speaker of the House - consistently fails to fund California for federal immigration failures. The state gets far less in federal funds than what it pays in taxes - despite bearing the brunt of the politicians' inability to deal seriously with immigration.
Managing the borders ought to be one of the federal government's most basic responsibilities. And as long as Washington continues to shirk that responsibility, the least it can do is compensate Southern California appropriately.
http://www.dailynews.com/search/ci_7925315?IADID=Se
arch-www.dailynews.com-www.dailynews.com
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/11/Busted_immigration_policies_cost_LA_dearlyaddcomment
Busted immigration policies cost L.A. dearly Article Last Updated: 01/09/2008 07:35:33 PM PST
As Los Angeles struggles with revenue shortfalls and cuts from Sacramento, keep the following figure in mind: $444 million.
That, according to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, is how much illegal immigration costs L.A. County in welfare and food stamps per year. Nearly half a billion dollars.
Immigration may be Washington's problem, but L.A. is bearing the cost.
The federal government's refusal to implement reform that allows for sensible immigration for hard-working and self-sufficient people perpetuates the current broken system - under which anyone can come in, without accountability or regulation.
What's more, when people work "invisibly" in the black market, there is no way to trace their income. Families that shouldn't qualify for benefits, do. And undocumented workers largely don't pay income taxes.
Unfortunately, immigration is a federal issue. It is Washington that fails to rationalize the process under which foreign nationals enter the country. And it is Washington that has proved woefully inept at securing the borders.
But Washington - even with a Californian as speaker of the House - consistently fails to fund California for federal immigration failures. The state gets far less in federal funds than what it pays in taxes - despite bearing the brunt of the politicians' inability to deal seriously with immigration.
Managing the borders ought to be one of the federal government's most basic responsibilities. And as long as Washington continues to shirk that responsibility, the least it can do is compensate Southern California appropriately.
http://www.dailynews.com/search/ci_7925315?IADID=Se
arch-www.dailynews.com-www.dailynews.com
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/11/Busted_immigration_policies_cost_LA_dearlyaddcomment
More "BENEFITS" of ILLEGAL Immigration...
More "BENEFITS" of ILLEGAL Immigration...
This is just one negative effect the flood of ILLEGAL Immigrants is having on our country...
The "poor" ILLEGAL Immigrants, on their way "to do jobs Americans won't do" show what they think of the United States. On the average each ILLEGAL Alien drops 8 1/2 lbs of trash, ( Pants, shirt, underwear, water bottles, tooth paste, tooth brush, and back packs...etc), then multiply this by the THREE MILLION a year who enter ILLEGALLY. To get a perspective on this dilemma multiply 8 1/2 by 3,000,000 = 25,500,000 lbs.
I am sorry for NOT being compassionate to criminals who throw trash in my neighborhood, damage private property, use our backyards as a toilet, and wake us up 6 out of 10 nights. High speed chases down border roads pass by our homes and Border Patrol's Helicopter flying low day and night over our homes seeking groups of ILLEGAL Aliens that are hiding in the brush, wears thin on my nerves. Could it be the thirty ILLEGAL Aliens running past our homes with 60 lbs of drugs on their backs, the lack of a good night's slumber and seeing the trash and damage these criminal do, cloud my thinking?!!
AMERICANS LIVING IN THE PATH OF THE INVASION CANNOT ESCAPE THIS NIGHTMARE IN OUR OWN BACKYARDS..
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/12/More_BENEFITS_of_ILLEGAL_Immigrationaddcomment
This is just one negative effect the flood of ILLEGAL Immigrants is having on our country...
The "poor" ILLEGAL Immigrants, on their way "to do jobs Americans won't do" show what they think of the United States. On the average each ILLEGAL Alien drops 8 1/2 lbs of trash, ( Pants, shirt, underwear, water bottles, tooth paste, tooth brush, and back packs...etc), then multiply this by the THREE MILLION a year who enter ILLEGALLY. To get a perspective on this dilemma multiply 8 1/2 by 3,000,000 = 25,500,000 lbs.
I am sorry for NOT being compassionate to criminals who throw trash in my neighborhood, damage private property, use our backyards as a toilet, and wake us up 6 out of 10 nights. High speed chases down border roads pass by our homes and Border Patrol's Helicopter flying low day and night over our homes seeking groups of ILLEGAL Aliens that are hiding in the brush, wears thin on my nerves. Could it be the thirty ILLEGAL Aliens running past our homes with 60 lbs of drugs on their backs, the lack of a good night's slumber and seeing the trash and damage these criminal do, cloud my thinking?!!
AMERICANS LIVING IN THE PATH OF THE INVASION CANNOT ESCAPE THIS NIGHTMARE IN OUR OWN BACKYARDS..
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/12/More_BENEFITS_of_ILLEGAL_Immigrationaddcomment
Mexican Government Incursions into the United States for Fiscal Year 2006...
Mexican Government Incursions into the United States for Fiscal Year 2006...
Judicial Watch Releases Border Patrol Report on Mexican Government Incursions into the United States for Fiscal Year 2006
Of 29 Incidents, 17 Involved Armed Mexican Government Personnel
(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released a U.S. Border Patrol report titled, "Mexican Government Incidents – 2006 Fiscal Year Report," obtained under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But for Judicial Watch's September, 2007 FOIA request, this information would not have been made public. The report describes 29 confirmed incidents in 2006 along the U.S.- Mexican border involving Mexican military and/or law enforcement personnel, 17 of which involved armed Mexican government agents. Among the incidents cited:
MEXICAN MILITARY ENCOUNTER (ARMED/INTENTIONAL) EL PASO – FORT HANCOCK STATION – At 2 P.M. on January 3, 2006, [Troopers] attempted to apprehend three vehicles believed to be smuggling contraband on I-10…As the vehicles approached the border, [Troopers] stated that a Mexican Military Humvee armed with a .50 caliber weapon and several soldiers were seen assisting smugglers return to Mexico…Officers then noticed several armed subjects dressed in fatigue type clothing unload the contraband into the Humvee. These subjects set fire to the stalled vehicle before leaving the area…
MEXICAN POLICE INCURSION (ARMED/INTENTIONAL) TUCSON NOGALES STATION – On June 2, 2006, a Border Patrol Agent assigned to the Nogales, Arizona station encountered two Mexican Police Officers that had illegally entered into the U.S. one mile west of the Mariposa Port of Entry…the Mexican Police Officers ran back into Mexico when ordered [by Border Patrol] to remain for questioning.
MEXICAN MILITARY INCURSION (ARMED/INTENTIONAL) EL CENTRO SECTOR – CALEXICO STATION – On September 16, 2006, a Border Patrol Agent assigned to the Calexico, California Station observed an individual in an olive drab uniform with a possible Mexican flag on the shoulder approximately 100 yards north of the International Border near the Calexico POE. The individual appeared to be carrying a sidearm and was running southbound to Mexico through the vehicle lanes of the Calexico POE.
The document also states that between 1996 and September 30, 2006 there were 253 confirmed incursions into the United States by Mexican government personnel. Prior to release to Judicial Watch, the Department of Homeland Security evaluated the information in the report as "For Official Use Only" and containing "Law Enforcement Sensitive Information." Additional Mexican government incursion reports for 2003 through 2005 are available on the Judicial Watch Internet site at: http://judicialwatch.org/5898.shtml.
"These documents not only show the dangerous and chaotic situation at the Mexican border, but also the complicity of some Mexican government agents in violating U.S. law," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "The U.S. government must begin to take these incidents more seriously, publicize them and take measures to bring the crisis at our border under control."
To read the current report: http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2008/FY2006Mexic
anIncursionReport.pdf
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/13/Mexican_Government_Incursions_into_the_United_States_for_Fiscal_Yearaddcomment
Judicial Watch Releases Border Patrol Report on Mexican Government Incursions into the United States for Fiscal Year 2006
Of 29 Incidents, 17 Involved Armed Mexican Government Personnel
(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released a U.S. Border Patrol report titled, "Mexican Government Incidents – 2006 Fiscal Year Report," obtained under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But for Judicial Watch's September, 2007 FOIA request, this information would not have been made public. The report describes 29 confirmed incidents in 2006 along the U.S.- Mexican border involving Mexican military and/or law enforcement personnel, 17 of which involved armed Mexican government agents. Among the incidents cited:
MEXICAN MILITARY ENCOUNTER (ARMED/INTENTIONAL) EL PASO – FORT HANCOCK STATION – At 2 P.M. on January 3, 2006, [Troopers] attempted to apprehend three vehicles believed to be smuggling contraband on I-10…As the vehicles approached the border, [Troopers] stated that a Mexican Military Humvee armed with a .50 caliber weapon and several soldiers were seen assisting smugglers return to Mexico…Officers then noticed several armed subjects dressed in fatigue type clothing unload the contraband into the Humvee. These subjects set fire to the stalled vehicle before leaving the area…
MEXICAN POLICE INCURSION (ARMED/INTENTIONAL) TUCSON NOGALES STATION – On June 2, 2006, a Border Patrol Agent assigned to the Nogales, Arizona station encountered two Mexican Police Officers that had illegally entered into the U.S. one mile west of the Mariposa Port of Entry…the Mexican Police Officers ran back into Mexico when ordered [by Border Patrol] to remain for questioning.
MEXICAN MILITARY INCURSION (ARMED/INTENTIONAL) EL CENTRO SECTOR – CALEXICO STATION – On September 16, 2006, a Border Patrol Agent assigned to the Calexico, California Station observed an individual in an olive drab uniform with a possible Mexican flag on the shoulder approximately 100 yards north of the International Border near the Calexico POE. The individual appeared to be carrying a sidearm and was running southbound to Mexico through the vehicle lanes of the Calexico POE.
The document also states that between 1996 and September 30, 2006 there were 253 confirmed incursions into the United States by Mexican government personnel. Prior to release to Judicial Watch, the Department of Homeland Security evaluated the information in the report as "For Official Use Only" and containing "Law Enforcement Sensitive Information." Additional Mexican government incursion reports for 2003 through 2005 are available on the Judicial Watch Internet site at: http://judicialwatch.org/5898.shtml.
"These documents not only show the dangerous and chaotic situation at the Mexican border, but also the complicity of some Mexican government agents in violating U.S. law," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. "The U.S. government must begin to take these incidents more seriously, publicize them and take measures to bring the crisis at our border under control."
To read the current report: http://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2008/FY2006Mexic
anIncursionReport.pdf
http://community.myfoxla.com/blogs/SEALTHEBORDER/2008/01/13/Mexican_Government_Incursions_into_the_United_States_for_Fiscal_Yearaddcomment
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