Thursday - July 13, 2006

Controversial Immigration Sign Surfaces in PA

NORTH VERSAILLES, Pa. (AP) —Bill Balsamico is like the opinionated guy at the end of the bar with a take on everything.

Difference is, Balsamico owns the bar and posts his musings on a 6-by-8-foot sign along a busy road.

He called Michael Jackson a freak. He jokingly suggested the Mafia run the government because they wouldn’t charge people as much to do it. He advised the U.S. to ``bomb the hell out of Iraq’’ and ``make it a giant litter box.’’

So far so good. What could possibly be controversial about him? He posted an anti-illegal message on his sign…

``Push 1 to proceed in English / Push 2 for deportation.’’

Yep, that got him in trouble.

UPDATE: The missing link is here.

Posted by Christopher     on 07/13/2006 at 08:47 PM   
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   Thursday - July 06, 2006

Catch And Release

This was sent in by Brit reader Peiper, who is an American living across the pond. What he doesn’t realize is that the same thing happens here in the US every day. Here they catch Mexicans, hold them until INS or ICE says they can’t handle them, then they are released on their own recognizance. In Britain, it’s Africans and Arabs instead of Mexicans. The only difference between us and the Brits is that we get our grass cut and our cars washed cheap. All the Brits get is bombs in the tube. Both the US and Britain have the same problem though - politicians who literally don’t give a damn.

Illegal Immigrants Found Hiding In Back Of Lorry
(HAMPSHIRE CHRONICLE) - June 29, 2006

Five illegal African immigrants found in the back of a lorry, spent the night at North Walls police station, before being packed off to London by train the next day. Winchester Police had received a tip-off about a “suspicious” lorry at Bar End, and the vehicle was tracked and eventually stopped in South Drive, Littleton, at 5pm last Wednesday.

Three men and two women, thought to be aged between 20 and 26, were found in the back of the Spanish lorry, and were arrested on suspicion of entering the country illegally. The group was taken to the Winchester police tation, but officers were told that Home Office immigration officials did not have the resources to deal with them at the time.

Instead, they were given shelter overnight in a front office at North Walls, and then put on a London-bound train the next morning. A police spokesman said the lorry was filled with cacti plants and blankets, and was believed to be en route to a local nursery. Winchester’s top police officer, Inspector Kevin Baxman, was on duty when the Africans were brought to the city station.

“It was pretty crammed in there,” he said. Insp Baxman said they were all “very hungry, very tired and weary. We called immigration and they told us they didn’t have the resources to deal with them. They then told us to release them with directions to the Immigration headquarters in Croydon,” he said. ”They didn’t speak English, they didn’t have any identification, they had no money, they had not had any food, and they didn’t know where they were.”

Insp Baxman said he had concerns for their safety late at night, and allowed them to spend the night in a front office at North Walls. The following morning, he followed the instructions of immigration officials, and gave them directions to Croydon. Police officers escorted the Africans to Winchester station, and negotiated with a rail company to transport the group.

They travelled on the next train, free of charge, unescorted. The Home Office said it does not comment on individual cases, and therefore could not confirm or deny whether they arrived. Insp Baxman added: ”Once immigration had made the decision, we couldn’t lawfully hold them. Fingerprints were taken in a bid to identify them, but there were no records. It’s not the first time it has happened,” added Insp Baxman. “Those people are in this country, but no one has any idea where they are.”

Winchester police detained the Spanish lorry driver, but immigration officers told him there was not enough evidence that he had done anything wrong, so he, too, was released. Insp Baxman added: “We have five cells in Winchester and when we have five people in custody obviously it ties up a lot of police officers and it’s very frustrating for nothing to happen.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 07/06/2006 at 10:07 AM   
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   Tuesday - June 20, 2006

Fake ID’s Busted

It’s not often we get any good news on the illegal alien front. This Mexican bandito has been at this business (and I DO mean business) of supplying fake ID’s for ages. Why it took six years to pin him down is a mystery to me. He had a “franchise” operation spread over the US and there’s no telling how many millions of illegal aliens he helped to invade the US. Now, let’s see what happens to him. Will Mexico actually turn him over to us? Will the US courts just end up setting him free? Let’s all keep an eye on this jerk and see what happens.

Mexico Arrests Man in Fake Document Probe
_{June 19, 2006, 11:48 PM EDT}

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP)—Mexican authorities have arrested the leader of a far-flung ring that allegedly made and distributed forged immigration and identification documents in the U.S., American officials said Monday. Pedro Castorena, 42, was arrested Saturday in Guadalajara, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement.

The arrest of Castorena, who allegedly headed a ring that counterfeited and distributed such documents as resident alien cards, Social Security cards and American driver’s licenses, “deals a serious blow to one of the largest fraudulent document organizations in the United States,” said Julie Myers of the Department of Homeland Security.

Castorena, who was indicted in Denver last July on charges of conspiracy, fraud, misuse of visas and money laundering, was located last month in Jalisco by ICE agents with the help of Mexican federal agents and state police.

The documents were distributed in several U.S. states, including California, Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina, Nebraska, Iowa, New Mexico and Colorado, ICE said. U.S. authorities say Castorena ran his organization like a franchise-style company with cells in more than a dozen cities across the United States and with cell leaders paying a “franchise fee” to operate the business.

The investigation that led to Castorena’s arrest began in 2000 when U.S. federal officials began looking into the sale and distribution of counterfeit IDs in Denver. Mexican authorities took Castorena to Mexico City, where he’s waiting extradition to the United States.

Posted by The Skipper     on 06/20/2006 at 07:15 AM   
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   Wednesday - June 07, 2006

Exploitation Of Illegal Aliens?

Mayor Nagin’s “chocolate city” is starting to smell more like burritos than chocolate with 100,000 illegal aliens flooding into the city to work for dirt-cheap wages ($10 per hour). Of course you know the big bad Haliburton and others are exploiting these poor hard-working criminals by paying them twice the minimum wage and only four out of five workers are given protective gear. Dick Cheney should be ashamed of how his company is trampling the civil rights of these poor, downtrodden workers - at least that’s what AP thinks.

Than again, they could always go to California or Florida and pick fruit for $7,500 per year (about $3.25 per hour). I haven’t heard anyone complain about those wages or the mega-rich companies like Dole or Archer Daniels Midland that have been paying those wages for decades. Why all the sympathy now - unless it’s just one more way to attack the Bush administration.

Face it though, if you criminally invade someone else’s country and are in hiding all the time, you are going to get screwed on wages and job conditions. Perhaps the Mexicans need to re-think their whole strategy. If they’d only come here legally, then they could bitch and complain all they want - just like the rest of us. Until then, they’re hosed ...

Illegal Workers Face Hardship in Big Easy
_{June 7, 2006, 6:49 AM EDT}

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - They are the backbone of post-Hurricane Katrina reconstruction: Workers who converge at dawn and wait to be picked up for 14-hour shifts of hauling debris, ripping out drywall and nailing walls.

But because many are in the country illegally, immigrant workers rebuilding New Orleans are especially vulnerable to exploitation, according to a study released Tuesday by professors at Tulane University and the University of California at Berkeley.

The illegal immigrants often work in hazardous conditions without protective gear and earn far less than their legal counterparts, the study said. Nearly one-third of the illegal immigrants interviewed by researchers reported working with harmful substances and in dangerous conditions, while 19 percent said they were not given any protective equipment.

Illegal immigrants also were paid significantly less—if at all—earning on average $10 per hour, compared with $16.50 for documented workers, the study said. “What is fundamentally unfair is these are workers who have responded to a national priority to rebuild this city and yet whose rights are being violated,” said Laurel Fletcher, director of Berkeley’s International Human Rights Law Clinic and one of the study’s co-authors.

Under federal labor law, illegal immigrants are afforded the same health and safety protections as documented workers. Regardless of their legal status, laborers can sue most employers under the Fair Labor Standards Act for violation of the minimum wage law and overtime regulations, the researchers said.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration said it has conducted more than 7,000 on-site inspections in the New Orleans area. The U.S. Department of Labor said it was concerned about wage and safety violations and had hurried to establish a Gulf Coast office.

“I’m not surprised that there are wage violations in the whole Gulf Coast rebuilding area—all of the conditions are there for that to occur,” said Victoria Lipnic, assistant secretary of labor for employment standards.

“But we’ve tried to be very proactive in our enforcement effort.” Before last year’s hurricane, Louisiana had one of the smallest Hispanic populations in the country—2.5 percent of residents compared with 12.5 percent nationally.

Census data indicates nearly 100,000 Hispanics moved to the Gulf Coast region after Katrina, lured by promises of high wages and plentiful work. It is unclear how many have come to New Orleans, though the study estimates one-quarter of the construction workers in the city are illegal immigrants.

While 83 percent of documented workers interviewed by the researchers said had access to medicine when needed, only 38 percent of illegal immigrants did. Around one-third of illegal immigrants said they understood the hazards of removing asbestos or mold, compared with more than 65 percent of documented laborers. Thirty-three percent of legal workers received medical attention when needed for a reported problem, compared to 10 percent of undocumented workers.

Some of those waiting for work said they are afraid of complaining. “It’s too dangerous for my body,” said 29-year-old Saul Linan, an illegal immigrant from Mexico. “But I don’t say anything. If I do, the boss says, `Hey, if you don’t work hard, I’ll take you to immigration.’”

Posted by The Skipper     on 06/07/2006 at 01:19 PM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens • Oppression •  
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   Monday - June 05, 2006

The Unwelcome Guests

Still think a “guest worker program” is a good idea? Read the story below and think again. Nearly half of illegals in the country right now came here legally with a work visa and ... never left. How’s that for a cold slap in the face?

Here you thought they were crawling over the fence and swimming the river and it turns out they are just walking in with our government’s permission and that same government then conveniently forgets about them.

Yes, that would be the very same government that will hound you or I to the grave over $100 in back taxes. That rotten, no-good, useless government in DC keeps millions of records on legal taxpaying citizens so they can find us in a flash ... yet they seem to have lost six million Mexicans.

Are you angry enough yet to do what needs to be done and vote every one of those fat, overpaid, bloviating politicians in DC out of office?

Millions of Visa Overstays Overlooked
_{June 5, 2006, 7:47 AM EDT}

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Millions of illegal immigrants in the United States never jumped the U.S.-Mexico border where Congress wants to erect impenetrable walls and President Bush is sending National Guard troops to patrol. They never sneaked in at all.

The little-acknowledged reality is that nearly half the estimated 12 million undocumented foreigners in the United States entered on bona fide U.S. visas—and simply never left. Authorities call them “overstays” who have been largely overlooked in the vitriolic debate on immigration.

“The southwestern border gets all the attention, but it’s staggering the number of people who come and overstay their visa,” said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington. “It’s a very large-scale problem.” A study by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center last month indicated that 45 percent of the undocumented migrants in the United States overstayed legal visas.

Confirming those findings or knowing the home country of those who overstay their visas is tricky because U.S. authorities don’t track the problem. Immigration authorities also generally don’t compare entry and exit information to see who should have left the country. “There’s no annual reports published on visa overstays because obviously these people are hiding and don’t want to be found,” Boyd said.

Ana Luisa certainly doesn’t, so she asked that her last name not be used. The Mexico City native lives in Dallas with her husband, 13-year-old son and 5-month-old daughter—who was born in the United States and is an American citizen—and volunteers at a middle school. When she moved to the United States, she made sure to return to Mexico every six months to renew her tourist visa. But the trip soon became a chore and she let her visa lapse a year ago. Now if she returns to Mexico again she likely won’t be able to get another U.S. visa.

“I’m illegal, but I’m someone who is trying to help with my work,” she said in a phone interview. Ana Luisa said she would never have sneaked across the border to get into the United States, and didn’t see the harm in overstaying her visa. In Dallas, she said, her son is able to get a better education than he would in Mexico.

“I wouldn’t risk my life in the river or in the desert like thousands of others do,” she said. Many borrow the social security numbers of legal residents or use falsified documents to build what appear to be legal identities, making it difficult for employers to know when someone is undocumented. Others work informally, as maids, gardeners or in other jobs where employers rarely require paperwork, despite federal law.

- More on the story here ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 06/05/2006 at 07:57 AM   
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   Wednesday - May 31, 2006

More Senate Silliness

I’ve already made note here in other posts what a dastardly deed the Senate is up to with their version of an immigration bill. Padded with all kinds of fine print and trashy amendments, it is just getting worse and worse. If you look at the roll call votes, it’s the Democrats who are padding the bill and voting for all the “extra” clauses but quite a few Republicans are betraying us too.

It has just come to my attention that one of the carefully hidden amendments in the Senate bill strikes at my field. Things have already gotten to the point where in most IT shops you can’t walk to the bathroom without passing cubicle after cubicle of Chinese or Indian workers, most of them on H-1B visas. Break rooms at lunchtime are a veritable Tower of Babel with Chinese dialects and Indian dialects filling the air. Most of them speak English very poorly because they have only been in the country a short time and don’t plan on staying.

Don’t get me wrong. Most of them are very good people, highly intelligent and well-educated. The problem I have is that I know a large portion of them are seriously underpaid, as the article below states. I talked to some of the Java programmers in a shop I recently worked in and found out that they were making about 1/3 of the typical wage that American programmers make - and they were sharing five of them in an apartment to make ends meet.

I also know quite a few American programmers who are out of work and looking for a job. My advice to all of them lately has been ... get hired by a Department Of Defense contractor like Lockheed, SAIC, CACI, Unisys, Northrup-Grumann or any of several contractors who provide IT services to the DoD. Most of those jobs require a Secret clearance at a minimum which rules out foreign citizens and H-1B’s.

The reason for all this is simple ... greed and cheap software for consumers. Companies like Microsoft hire the cheap labor and then sell you Windows XP for $200 - and the bloody software is full of bugs and security flaws - not to mention hundreds of “undocumented features” as we call them. So they go to Washington and lobby the Senate, contribute big bucks to campaigns and the Senators comply with crap like this amendment to the Immigration Bill. As for the rest of us ... all we can do is bend over and grab our ankles ...

Senate Immigration Bill Raises H-1B Limit
_{Annual cap would increase from 65,000 to 115,000
May 30, 2006}

WASHINGTON (COMPUTERWORLD-IDG News Service)

Flying mostly under the radar in a controversial immigration reform bill that passed the U.S. Senate last week was a provision that would raise the cap on the number of high-skilled foreign workers allowed into the U.S. Some technology companies praised the wide-ranging immigration bill, which passed the Senate Thursday, because it would raise the cap on the hotly debated H-1B program, often used by U.S. technology companies to hire foreign IT workers. The bill would increase the annual H-1B cap from 65,000 to 115,000, but many Republicans in the House of Representatives have criticized other provisions in the bill, saying it’s too soft on illegal immigration.

In passing the bill, the Senate took a “critical step forward in its important work to ensure that our nation remains the global leader in technology innovation,” said Bill Gates, Microsoft Corp.’s chairman and chief software architect, in a statement. Gates and other technology leaders have called for a higher cap on H-1B visas, saying many companies cannot find enough U.S. workers with specialized tech skills. The number of applications for H-1Bs for the federal government’s fiscal year 2006 hit the cap in August 2005, a month and a half before the fiscal year began.

But a group representing U.S. IT workers questioned the need for more H-1B visas. The program is full of abuses, with many companies not paying the required prevailing wage for H-1B workers, said Ron Hira, vice president for career activities at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA (IEEE-USA). “The program is basically broken and can be easily manipulated,” Hira said. “Until it’s fixed, it makes no sense to increase the cap.”

In 2005, the U.S Office of Management and Budget said the H-1B program is “vulnerable to fraud and abuse” because the U.S. Department of Labor has limited means to check the wages paid to H-1B workers, Hira noted. IEEE-USA has also said out-of-work U.S. IT workers should get the first shot at vacant tech jobs at U.S. companies.

But the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a trade group for technology vendors, praised the Senate for including the H-1B provisions in the larger immigration bill. The bill, which would allow illegal immigrants a way to gain U.S citizenship or legal status, is opposed by many Republican lawmakers, and its future is uncertain. Although the bill passed 62-36 in the Senate, a majority of the chamber’s Republicans opposed it.

The H-1B provisions could be a “bridge to compromise,” said Ralph Hellman, ITI’s senior vice president for government relations. Many Republicans support the H-1B increases, and those provisions could be part of a compromise package, he said. Hellman dismissed arguments that an H-1B increase isn’t needed. Opponents of the cap increase “don’t have a very strong standing in Congress,” he said. “Quite frankly, we don’t think they have the facts correct.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/31/2006 at 04:33 PM   
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Waiting On A Train

My take on this issue is pretty simple: Congress is not going to be able to pass immigration reform before the November elections. As the editorial excerpt below explains, the House and Senate are diametrically opposed on how to go about it. The House wants to take a tough stance but the Senate wants to include a ton of - shall we say - bulls**t amendments and extra crap that don’t make sense. As reported recently, the Senate bill has a lot of fine print. Here is a sample:

More minor-league athletes from other countries could get visas under the bill. More veterans could be recruited for border duty. The U.S. government would need to consult with various Mexican officials before new border fences could go in. Frequent Western Hemisphere travelers would get a new traveling card. More Canadian power-line workers could enter if they have received “significant training.”

Two-thousand Christian Iraqis in the Detroit area who now face deportation - and more in other parts of the country - could become eligible for legal permanent residency status. That provision seeks to undo a judge’s finding that religious minorities who came here seeking asylum from Saddam Hussein’s regime and got caught in an immigration backlog no longer have claims simply because the Iraqi leader was deposed.

_{Steve Sack - The Minneapolis Star-Tribune}

- Washington Times (May 29): “Make Or Break On Immigration”

The bitter battle over the immigration bill has become a legislative minefield in this election year, though whether it will yield heavy political casualties in November remains to be seen. To say that this issue is a wilderness of thorns, festering party divisions and brewing voter backlashes is putting it mildly. It could inflict additional wounds on George Bush’s battle-scarred presidency, shrink the GOP’s congressional majority and, possibly, hurt some vulnerable Democrats as well. Let’s take some of these pitfalls one by one.

Frankly, it is difficult at this juncture to see how the House and Senate can agree a compromise bill that can attract a majority in either chamber. Their two respective bills are diametrically opposed to one another. The House wants beefed-up, effective enforcement only and no other reforms until we’ve prevented all illegals from crossing the Mexican-U.S. border or at least significantly reduced their numbers.

The Senate generally wants that, plus other reforms, including a guest-worker program that lets migrants cross and recross the border to take jobs in the U.S. when available and would allow those who’ve been here several years to eventually become citizens after paying taxes, fines and meeting some other legal requirements. Neither side is willing to give at this point and leaders in both chambers say the other’s bill would be a nonstarter with their members.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has a political rule on bringing bills to the floor: They must first be supported by a majority of the majority, that is a majority of Republicans. As of now, say party leaders, a majority does not exist and isn’t likely to if a House-Senate conference produces a blend of the two bills with any citizenship provisions.

White House political strategist Karl Rove met Wednesday with House lawmakers to encourage some give in on their position and the word from the closed-door meeting was that he got “a cold reception.” This sets up a possible scenario where the Republicans are unable to produce a bill that can win a majority of both houses and that, as much as anything, would drive Congress’ dismal poll ratings even lower --hurting the Republicans in charge of its legislative machinery and President Bush, who would be seen as ineffectual in enacting his agenda.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/31/2006 at 04:33 AM   
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   Sunday - May 28, 2006

Building Fences

If you search the web for “border fence”, you will find millions of related stories. There are blogs on both sides of the issue. Not surprisingly, most of the blogs that are for building a fence are in the majority. Those that are against a fence use phrases like “mean-spirited” and “contrary to American ideals”. With all due respect, those blog sites are full of s**t - and they know it. It’s not about “immigration” people! It’s about “the law”.

The whining Liberals and the Angry Left have never understood that you abide by the law or you seek to change it. I’m reminded of the 2000 election when the “Gore Goons” fought to force Katherine Harris to disregard Florida’s law regarding vote count submissions and deadlines for same. Or perhaps, Mayor Gavin Newsom in San Francisco who decided to over-rule California law (passed by a majority of voters in a referendum) by performing homosexual marriages. If Liberals don’t like a law you can almost count on them to break it at the earliest opportunity.

I hate to break the news to them but that’s just not the way it’s done. If a law is bad, you abide by it and you fight to have it changed. It worked against the “Jim Crow” laws during the 1950’s and 1960’s. In fact, it usually works all the time. It’s called ”DEMOCRACY”. Simply breaking a law because you disagree with it is called ”ANARCHY” and most commonly known as ”CRIME”. Got that?

No one doubts for an instant that our immigration laws are outdated and broken. In fact, Congress (def: the opposite of “progress") is working on modernizing our immigration rules even as we speak. Whether or not those pork-loving meatheads in DC can accomplish change is up to us. We have to keep putting pressure on the distinguished dipshits representing us or else they’ll forget about it in lieu of passing legislation to appropriate more money for further studies of frog sex. That means Liberals and Conservatives alike have to keep pounding on Congress’s e-mail and snail-mail boxes.

Another method is to literally shame our government into getting up off its lazy butt and doing something. That is all the Minutemen are doing. Private citizens building small sections of fence is merely a token gesture but a strong one. They are saying to government that “if you won’t do it, we will”. They are not shooting anyone or using violence against any poor Mexican plodding across the desert to find a job cutting Barbara Streisand’s lawn for $3 per hour. We would gladly welcome that poor clodhopper if he would only do it within the law.

Whether that is done with a guest worker program, a green card or even application for citizenship doesn’t matter - as long as it is done legally. We are in desperate need of someone who can show Taco Bell how to make a decent burrito. And who knows ... that poor latino might get all cleaned up, go to school and wind up one day as US Attorney General ... and then it would be his job to enforce the law.

Minutemen Installing Arizona Border Fence
_{May 28, 2006, 9:44 AM EDT}

PALOMINAS, Ariz. (AP)—Scores of volunteers gathered at a remote ranch Saturday to help a civilian border-patrol group start building a short security fence in hopes of reducing illegal immigration from Mexico. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps plans to install a combination of barbed wire, razor wire, and in some spots, steel rail barriers along the 10-mile stretch of private land in southeastern Arizona.

They hope it prompts the federal government to do the same along the entire Arizona border. President Bush has pledged to deploy as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to strengthen enforcement at the border. The guardsmen would fill in on some behind-the-lines Border Patrol jobs while that agency’s force is expanded.

But the Minutemen have said it’s not enough. The group’s founder, Chris Simcox, said they want a secure fence and they’re starting at the site where his first patrols began in November 2002. Rancher Jack Ladd and his son, John, were hopeful the effort would limit the illegal immigrants and drug runners who have cut the small fence along the property or just driven over it to cross into the U.S. “We’ve been fighting this thing for 10 years with the fence, and nobody will do anything,” Jack Ladd said.

- More on the fence at NewsMax ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/28/2006 at 12:48 PM   
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   Friday - May 26, 2006

Politics In Arizona

Arizona is a beautiful state. I’m sure going to miss it after Mexico annexes it. The legislature just passed an immigration bill that the US Senate would do well to read and follow - but they won’t. Arizona legislators are simply responding to the majority of the state’s citizens. As you can read below, officials in the border counties are urging the governor to veto the bill. I wonder why. My guess is the local officials along the border are mostly Mexican immigrants themselves who are legal citizens but prefer to look the other way when illegals come across. I’d like to hear from someone down in Tombstone or Tucson on that.

Regardless, Governor Napolitano will most likely veto the bill and the legislators can go home and say “we tried”. Hogwash. They’re no better than the crooks in Washington who are playing the same game: pretend to be doing something while doing nothing. The longer this goes on the worse it gets, not just in Arizona but all across the country. Amnesty? No! Guest worker program? Maybe! Seal the border? Hell yes! Fine businesses who hire illegals? You bet! Vote out the jerks who are playing games with this issue? YES!

Arizona Legislature OKs Immigration Bill
_{May 26, 2006, 2:03 AM EDT}

PHOENIX (AP)—The Legislature approved a bill Thursday that would criminalize the presence of illegal immigrants in Arizona and provide $160 million to help authorities in the nation’s busiest illicit entry point with their immigration crackdown.

The legislation also would set fines for businesses that continue to employ illegal immigrants after receiving warnings, require local police agencies to train officers in enforcing immigration law and deny education benefits to immigrants.

The bill, which was approved 33-22 by the House and 16-9 by the Senate, now goes to Gov. Janet Napolitano. Spokeswoman Jeanine L’Ecuyer declined to say whether the governor would sign it, but lawmakers on both sides of the debate predicted a veto. Officials from Arizona’s four border counties have urged Napolitano to reject the bill.

The plan would resurrect a proposal to criminalize the presence of illegal immigrants by expanding the state’s trespassing law to let local authorities arrest those who sneak into the country. Napolitano vetoed that measure last month, siding with police agencies that wanted immigration arrests to remain the responsibility of the federal government and complained that the duty would be a drag on their budgets.

Among other things, the bill would provide $54 million for communities for arresting and detaining illegal immigrants and nearly $29 million for border efforts by state police. About $50 million, to be distributed over two years, would go toward radars to help spot illegal border-crossers. Authorities would get another $2 million to crack down on illegal hirings.

The bill would require businesses to fire employees whose Social Security numbers are invalid. Illegal immigrants frequently use forgeries to meet federal employment eligibility requirements. It would let state prosecutors seek civil penalties as high as $5,000 and the suspension or revocation of business licenses if an employer under investigation fails to stop employing illegal immigrants.

The bill would also require local police to get training in immigration law and sign agreements with the federal government to let local officers investigate and arrest illegal immigrants. Many police officials have resisted efforts to enforce immigration law, saying it would detract from their roles in investigating thefts, assaults and other crimes and would jeopardize the trust they have built in immigrant communities.

The bill also would prohibit illegal immigrants from attending adult education classes and receiving cheaper in-state tuition and financial assistance at the state’s public universities and community colleges.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/26/2006 at 06:50 AM   
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   Saturday - May 20, 2006

Senate Insanity

I am not pleased with the US Senate, especially the Democrats and Liberals who seek to encourage illegal immigrants to come here by allowing them to buy into the retirement system while they break the freaking law. Illegal immigrants are a drain on the system anyway, getting free medical care and educational benefits.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why we should allow them to profit from their criminal activity by helping them to retire later on money illegally earned. The usual suspects are to blame for this farce ... Senators Leahy and Stabenow - two Liberals who don’t give a damn what law-abiding citizens want as long as they can pander to illegals who can be encouraged to vote for them. It’s time to flush the Senate. Send out for the Tidy Bowl man ... !

Illegals granted Social Security
_{May 19, 2006}

The Senate voted yesterday to allow illegal aliens to collect Social Security benefits based on past illegal employment—even if the job was obtained through forged or stolen documents. “There was a felony they were committing, and now they can’t be prosecuted. That sounds like amnesty to me,” said Sen. John Ensign, the Nevada Republican who offered the amendment yesterday to strip out those provisions of the immigration reform bill. “It just boggles the mind how people could be against this amendment.”

The Ensign amendment was defeated on a 50-49 vote. “We all know that millions of undocumented immigrants pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for years and sometimes decades while they work to contribute to our economy,” said Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican. “The Ensign amendment would undermine the work of these people by preventing lawfully present immigrant workers from claiming Social Security benefits that they earned before they were authorized to work in our community,” he said. “If this amendment were enacted, the nest egg that these immigrants have worked hard for would be taken from them and their families.”

Mr. Ensign was among 44 Republicans and five Democrats who voted to block such payouts. “It makes no sense to reward millions of illegal immigrants for criminal behavior while our Social Security system is already in crisis,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican. “Why in the world would we endorse this criminal activity with federal benefits? The Senate missed a big opportunity to improve this bill, and I doubt American seniors will be pleased with the result.”

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, said it would be unfair to deny illegals the benefits. “We should not steal their funds or empty their Social Security accounts,” he said. “That is not fair. It does not reward their hard work or their financial contributions. It violates the trust that underlies the Social Security Trust Fund.”

Within hours, the vote had become an issue in this fall’s elections, raised by a Republican challenger to Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat. “Instead of protecting the retirement security of Americans who are earning an honest living and abiding by the laws of our country, Debbie Stabenow sided with people who are here illegally and abuse our Social Security system,” Oakland County, Mich., Sheriff Michael Bouchard said in a press release. “Allowing illegal immigrants to use their illegal work history as credit towards receiving Social Security benefits shows that Debbie Stabenow has forgotten who she is supposed to be working for in the U.S. Senate.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/20/2006 at 11:12 AM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens • Social-Security •  
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   Friday - May 19, 2006

A Real Shootin’ War

Remember, a few days ago I told y’all that this would be turning into a real shootin’ war real soon? Don’t say I didn’t told’ja so ...

San Diego Border Reopens After Shooting
_{May 19, 2006, 9:36 AM EDT}

SAN DIEGO (AP)—The world’s busiest border crossing reopened early Friday following a nine-hour closure that occurred after federal authorities shot and killed the driver of a sport utility vehicle headed for Mexico, officials said.

The shooting on Interstate 5 around 3:30 p.m. Thursday was about 50 feet north of the San Ysidro Port of Entry, which links Tijuana, Mexico with San Diego. The crossing reopened around early Friday, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The driver, who was not identified, was pronounced dead at the scene with multiple gunshot wounds, said Maurice Luque, a spokesman for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department. No other injuries were reported.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents began following the black SUV after somebody reported seeing it pick up suspected illegal immigrants near the U.S. side of the Otay Mesa border crossing, said Lt. Kevin Rooney of San Diego Police Department.

As traffic backed up near the border, the vehicle stopped on the shoulder. When agents approached and tried to get the driver to step out of the SUV, the suspect “began to drive off and he veered hard to the left, trying to get back in traffic,” Rooney said. Two agents then opened fire, he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the driver was armed. Five passengers, whose identities were not released, were taken into custody, Rooney said. Anna Valderrama of Tijuana, Mexico, who was about four vehicles back when the shooting occurred, said she was stuck in her car for more than two hours. “I was going to eat with my family,” said Valderrama. “I feel desperate to go home.”

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/19/2006 at 11:17 AM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens •  
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   Thursday - May 18, 2006

Ann Nails it

Via Misha

READ MY LIPS: NO NEW AMNESTY

anncoulter.com

On the bright side, if President Bush’s amnesty proposal for illegal immigrants ends up hurting Republicans and we lose Congress this November, maybe the Democrats will impeach him and we’ll get Cheney as president.

At least Bush has dropped his infernal references to slacker Americans when talking about illegal immigrants. In his speech Monday night, instead of 47 mentions of “jobs Americans won’t do,” Bush referred only once to “jobs Americans are not doing” — which I take it means other than border enforcement and intelligence-gathering at the CIA. For the record, I’ll volunteer right now to clean other people’s apartments if I don’t have to pay taxes on what I earn.

Go read the rest and be glad you’re not in her sights.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/18/2006 at 01:57 PM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens •  
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Angry Mexicans

It’s obvious to me from reading the article below that the Mexicans want a war. They may get it before this is over. In the meantime, we need to do something about the collaborators behind our lines .... businesses who hire illegals. Can we start building the internment camps now?

The Mexicans who are getting their panties in a wad may not realize it but their getting angry only makes the matter worse. The USA is our country, not theirs. We will defend it with whatever means necessary - even if our government won’t. If they want to come here legally, fine. If they continue to escalate the anger on this issue, it could turn into a real shooting war real soon.

_{Jim Day—Las Vegas Review Journal}

Mexicans Denounce Senate Border Plan
_{May 18, 2006, 5:43 AM EDT}

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (AP)—Mexican lawmakers angrily denounced a measure approved by the U.S. Senate to build new border fences, and illegal immigrants vowed to skirt them and cross into U.S. territory anyway. But the administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox, which had called the fence proposal “shameful” and “stupid” as recently as December, was conspicuously silent after the Senate bill passed Wednesday—perhaps because the measure also opens the door for millions of undocumented Mexicans to achieve some legal status in the United States.

“There are so many of us, most with families and roots in the United States. They are never going to stop us from crossing,” said Julio Cesar Gutierrez, a 21-year-old from the western city of Guadalajara who was planning to swim across the Rio Grande into Texas from the border city of Nuevo Laredo. “We will dig under a wall, go over one. If the authorities over there want a war, we will fight.” Gutierrez, who was wearing a Washington Nationals baseball cap and a backpack carrying bottled water, said he had crossed three previous times and worked as a cook in Houston but was deported each time. “They want to treat migrants like criminals,” he said. “All we want to do is work.”

The Senate agreed to give many illegal immigrants a shot at U.S. citizenship, but also backed construction of 370 miles of triple-layered fencing along the southern border. It is unclear where the new barriers would be built, though some have speculated they could go up in an area that includes Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas. The measure, which has yet to clear the House, comes as President Bush continues to flesh out his plans to deploy 6,000 National Guard soldiers along the border to support the Border Patrol. In Mexico City, lawmakers from Fox’s conservative National Action Party and both major opposition parties denounced the initiative.

“It’s a lamentable development and more evidence of a step backward in bilateral relations between Mexico and the United States,” said Inti Munoz, a spokesman for House lawmakers from the leftist Democratic Revolution Party. ”The construction of a wall and the militarization of the border are signs that speak of the absolute failure and lack of Mexican foreign policy.”

Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said late Wednesday that the government would not immediately comment on the Senate bill. Just days earlier, the Fox administration was quick to express concern that Bush’s National Guard plan could “militarize” the border region. In December, the Mexican president said extending border walls was “shameful,” and Derbez called a U.S. House proposal to do so “stupid.”

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador—a fiery Fox critic and the Democratic Revolution Party’s presidential candidate in July 2 elections—called the president’s silence on the Senate bill a sign of weakness. “The truth is the federal government and the president have no authority,” Lopez Obrador said Wednesday. “And for that reason, Mexicans who cross the border out of necessity are being humiliated.”

Migrants preparing to cross the border in Nuevo Laredo said they would prefer to climb walls than make dangerous trips through the desert into Arizona and New Mexico, routes that have become popular since U.S. authorities fortified barriers separating San Diego and Tijuana. “In the desert, smoke rises from the ground and you can die while you’re walking,” Gutierrez said. “The river here, even with a wall, is easier.”

Jose Antonio Maldonado, a 16-year-old from Honduras who was trying to make it into the United States illegally for the first time, said he had no family or friends across the border and was unsure where to find work if he succeeded in crossing. “We have withstood days of train rides, risking our lives without eating, without sleeping, to get to the border,” he said, detailing the trip from his homeland. Central Americans traveling without proper documents in Mexico face deportation and often complain of being beaten or extorted by corrupt authorities. “If there were a wall here, or any other obstacle, we’d overcome it,” he said.

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/18/2006 at 09:13 AM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens •  
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   Tuesday - May 16, 2006

The Idjits Speak

Argue with the President all you want in the posts below this one but remember that any action is going to have to have the cooperation of Congress and guess what’s going to happen there? Take a look at the comments below from leading assholes Democrats and Liberals. Get the picture? You and I may have problems with aspects of President Bush’s plan but it will surely fail if these Donk goobers continue to howl at the moon and get in the way of any plan of any kind that comes from Bush or the GOP. Touch choice, ain’t it? We can nitpick the plan and watch the Donks get what they want (control of Congress in November) or we can go along with the damn plan and hope for the best. Did somebody mention something about a “rock and a hard place”?

The New York Times: “Some of the border state governors, Democrats in Congress, and others immediately raised questions about the practicality of the plan.” (Jim Rutenberg, “President Calls For Compromise On Immigration,” The New York Times, 5/16/06)

DNC Chair Howard Dean: “Unfortunately, at a time when we needed real leadership, we once again heard a political PR campaign filled with an unrealistic short-term fix, rather than a detailed long term solution.” (Stephen Dinan, “Bush Calls For Guard On Border,” The Washington Times, 5/16/06)

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV): “It is not enough for President Bush to tell us he wants to increase security at our borders. After all, he’s had five years to do it. If he wants to be credible on border security, he must acknowledge his mistakes and commit to fixing them.” (Mark Silva, “President Calls For Balance On Border,” Chicago Tribune, 5/16/06)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “We must protect our borders, but militarizing our borders is a desperate response by the president to his and Republican Congress’ policy failures.” (Mark Silva, “President Calls For Balance On Border,” Chicago Tribune, 5/16/06)

Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM): “[I]’m very skeptical as a border governor that deals with this issue every day of the National Guard deployed at the border.” (CNN’s “Larry King Live,” 5/15/06)

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL): “Democrats are willing to support any reasonable plan that will secure our borders, including deploying National Guard troops ... But Americans don’t want a plan that’s been cobbled together to win political favor.” (David Espo, “Bush Proposes Sending Troops To Border,” The Associated Press, 5/16/06)

Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D-OR): “Within the conservative wing of the Republican Party ... [the President’s plan] may be good politics. But it is lousy policy.” (Mark Silva, “President Calls For Balance On Border,” Chicago Tribune, 5/16/06)

“[DNC Chair Howard] Dean Said His Party Will Make Immigration An Issue As Part Of Its Strategy To ‘Nationalize’ The Fall Elections And Is Opening A Television Advertising Campaign ...” (Ralph Z. Hallow, “Dean Calls The Border Top Priority,” The Washington Times, 4/20/06)

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA): “I think politics got in front of policy on this issue.” (Carl Hulse and Rachel L. Swarns, “Blame And Uncertainty As Immigration Deal Fails,” The New York Times, 4/8/06)

Posted by The Skipper     on 05/16/2006 at 03:04 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Illegal-Aliens •  
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